The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg recently interviewed Hillary Clinton, and Goldberg showcased a remark Clinton made about what some people are calling the Obama Doctrine, “Don’t do stupid shit.” The remark suggests Clinton finds the doctrine lacking:
Professional Clinton-watchers (and there are battalions of them) have told me that it is only a matter of time before she makes a more forceful attempt to highlight her differences with the (unpopular) president she ran against, and then went on to serve. On a number of occasions during my interview with her, I got the sense that this effort is already underway….
At one point, I mentioned the slogan President Obama recently coined to describe his foreign-policy doctrine: “Don’t do stupid shit” (an expression often rendered as “Don’t do stupid stuff” in less-than-private encounters).
This is what Clinton said about Obama’s slogan: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”
She softened the blow by noting that Obama was “trying to communicate to the American people that he’s not going to do something crazy,” but she repeatedly suggested that the U.S. sometimes appears to be withdrawing from the world stage.
It’s no accident that blogs and media outlets are making this out to be a huge split between Clinton and Obama; Goldberg sets it up that way. I think it’s worth reading the entire interview that quote came from — it’s a lot more nuanced than the sound byte suggests. Here’s the exchange from which the above was excerpted:
HRC: Great nations need organizing principles, and “Don’t do stupid stuff” is not an organizing principle. It may be a necessary brake on the actions you might take in order to promote a vision.
JG: So why do you think the president went out of his way to suggest recently that that this is his foreign policy in a nutshell?
HRC: I think he was trying to communicate to the American people that he’s not going to do something crazy. I’ve sat in too many rooms with the president. He’s thoughtful, he’s incredibly smart, and able to analyze a lot of different factors that are all moving at the same time. I think he is cautious because he knows what he inherited, both the two wars and the economic front, and he has expended a lot of capital and energy trying to pull us out of the hole we’re in.
So I think that that’s a political message. It’s not his worldview, if that makes sense to you.
The Villagers are going to feast on any suggestion of daylight or discord between the Obamas and the Clintons because they love a soap opera that drives a wedge between Democrats. And some of us are going to make their job easier by looking for a pea of criticism under 25 mattresses of praise.
That quest will be made incredibly easy by the fact that HRC and whomever else runs for the Democratic Party’s 2016 nomination is going to separate him or herself from President Obama’s policies on multiple fronts. They are not going to say Obama is fucking up, but they’ll talk about how they would do things differently or how they see events playing out in the future. That’s the way it works, and if you read Goldberg’s transcript, that’s all HRC is doing.
That said, my major concern about HRC is her hawkishness. That’s why I supported Obama instead of HRC back in 2008 — he recognized the Iraq War as “stupid shit” from the beginning; she didn’t.
The remark highlighted above doesn’t tell us much about Clinton’s organizing principles. When Goldberg questioned her directly on it, her response was “peace, progress and prosperity,” which could have come from a Miss World pageant script.
But she did have a lot to say about the situation in the Middle East, Russia, etc., and also here at home, which, while not as interesting from a purely salacious point of view as a suggestion that she’s criticizing Obama, provides a better indication of how she might act as president. I’d urge anyone who’s interested in that to read the whole damn thing.
Baud
Thanks for the thoughtful post, Betty. We were talking about the article in the last thread.
Kropadope
From what I know about her, I’m sure she sees this as a bad thing. That’s why she has a long way to go to earn my vote, not that it matters here in MA.
srv
You people aren’t going to get the Apology Tour you hope for.
PsiFighter37
It’s quite simple; “don’t do stupid shit” needs to be stated out loud because too many (including Hillary) did stupid shit with regards to Iraq.
If she wants to knock common sense, that’s up to her, but she should know there is too little of that on the Sunday talk shows and the rest of the Village.
Suffern ACE
@srv: oh. Egad. Story telling? She’s been hacked by consultants. I bet she she has a mission statement and a purpose in mind, too.
KG
So, Hillary’s plan is “occasionally do stupid shit in order to save face”?
John Cole +0
She hasn’t learned a god damned thing.
Cacti
Thanks to Hills for reminding me why I didn’t support her in 2008.
Still a warmonger.
srv
@Suffern ACE:
Maybe Jeffrey can find a spot on her policy team.
Alex S.
Comments like this one are going to appear more frequently. Obama is becoming a lame duck. So it’s somewhat to be expected, but I cannot see any consistency in Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy statements. I can’t see her ‘organizing principle’. I think she was against the attempt to assassinate Osama bin Laden. She has also rejected the liberal interventionism as supported by Obama’s friend Samantha Power and I recall some reports on internal conflicts on this matter. So I don’t know why she suddenly wants to do more now. The principle behind “you should have done more in Syria’, if it’s not liberal interventionism, would have been that she wants America not just to ‘lead from behind’ in the Middle East, but to actively change the way things are going there. That would mean boots on the ground. And what does she suggest? Send troops to fight ISIS? Try to topple Assad with troops? Wikipedia tells me that ISIS was founded as a reaction to the American occupation of Iraq, so whatever she’s suggesting would probably be counter-productive. But then maybe I am overanalyzing the matter and she’s just an opportunist.
Trentrunner
These are not the only two choices.
Trentrunner
And, I’ll add, “hunkering down” might mean (foreign) people die, but it will also mean that you didn’t kill them.
Epicurus
Richard Bruce Cheney and George Bush have left a shitstain on the body politic in this country that we won’t be able to wash off for a long, long time. Much of this macho posturing is the bastard child of “Mission Accomplished” and other propaganda. Now that we have a thoughtful man in the Oval Office, many still seem to think that all the U.S. needs do is wave it’s dick at geopolitical problems and everything will go our way. Thanks for your cogent post on the topic, and particulary for adding some much needed context to the Clinton quote. Are we already setting up the circular firing squad? Republicans are the enemy, not Obama vs. Clinton.
Cacti
@Epicurus:
I don’t think Hillary is a neocon so much as an unreformed Cold Warrior, still stuck in a mid to late 20th century mindset.
Emma
Jesus. We’re going to destroy our most likely candidate before the Republicans get to her. OK, I’ll bite. Who else? And NOT Elizabeth Warren. She says she’s not running, and if she’s lying about that, she’s not better than Hillary. So, considering electability, who else is there?
James E. Powell
That said, my major concern about HRC is her hawkishness.
Don’t you think that her hawkishness is more rhetoric than policy? And don’t you think she will have to be that way in order to run against a Republican manly man in this still very sexist country?
My only concern about Hillary Clinton is whether she can win a general election. After that, I will put up with her coziness with Wall Street and the national security state just as I have with every Democratic president since forever. I don’t like it, but we’ve seen what happens to Democratic candidates who fail to pledge fealty to those two powerful forces.
Kropadope
@Epicurus: It’s not Obama vs. Clinton that concerns me, but Clinton vs. the world.
srv
@Alex S.: I think she’s just jerking Samantha’s, Susan Rice and the R2P’ers chain – they’re the ones who were talking about ‘liberal’ jihadis and who will bomb “for the children.”
I’d rub their noses in it too if I was SoS and had emos driving FP from the NSC and executive staff.
Citizen_X
So is Rand Paul going to flank her to the dovish side?
Stop laughing. Legions of Paultards will claim he will, as will the Village assholes, and Nader, and Chomsky, and a lot of people here.
But he won’t. Once we get into the campaign, he’s going to be as warmongery as Perry or whoever. If he’s actually as anti-MIC then as he may claim to be (to some people) now, I will eat my hat. Hell, I’ll eat Pharrell’s hat.
Kropadope
@Emma:
Anyone, either party, I’m game.
raven
Hillary gets elected and she kill the first fucking thing that moves just to prove she will. Take it to the bank.
PsiFighter37
@Emma: More like she will destroy herself. Not our fault that she says stupid shit.
Baud
@Kropadope:
You’re in luck. The GOP will have a nominee.
Kropadope
@Baud: Yeah, well, I hope that person’s not my better option but I’m not too optimistic.
Baud
@raven:
And then make the person she killed apologize to her, just to outdo Cheney.
the Conster
@Emma:
Sheldon Whitehouse. Sherrod Brown. Martin O’Malley. Yeah, all white guys. That’s what it’s going to take this time, I think.
Chris T.
Pet peeve: sound bite, not sound byte. It’s not an 8-bit sound. (Maybe 8-bit sound is what you get from the old 8-bit games?)
Cacti
@PsiFighter37:
This.
Nobody forced her to listen to Mark Penn, tell outrageous whoppers about Bosnia, or use clumsy dog whistle racism last time around.
If her campaign is sunk, it will be by her own sub par political instincts.
Baud
@Kropadope:
Probably will be, even if Hillary is not the nominee.
moonbat
@raven: I haven’t seen much discussion on this probable dynamic yet (or I just haven’t read about it enough), but I can see it coming. If Clinton is the nominee they are going to dog whistle that a woman is too soft to be CiC and she will react (because she doesn’t have Obama’s cool head) by being the hawkiest of them all. She did it in 2008 with the spurious “under fire on the tarmac” story and she’ll do it again.
Botsplainer
@Citizen_X:
Rand Paul says he doesn’t like drones (sort of, when they’re not being employed against domestic dusky hued youth), and he doesn’t like the NSA, both of which are like the worstest tyrannies ever visited on white guys, along with the tyranny of regulating industrial effluent, the tyranny of being made to do business with the colored, the tyranny of sluts doing what they want with their tingley bits and the tyranny of allowing the colored to vote.
What’s not to love, when guys like Don Black will have a standing appointment at the White House?
Suffern ACE
@srv: Hilary Clinton is against Fascism and Communism. Good to know.
Kropadope
@Baud: There are plenty of Ds who could plausibly run and would be a good choice. Not many are making strong indications of running before Hillary, warrior princess, makes her decision official.
droog
I don’t care much if there is daylight between Obama and Clinton’s foreign policy views. They are different people!
But you know what? If the Democratic candidate runs against Obama’s foreign policy record that will be the the #1 Top Stupid Shit of the election.
To HRC or anyone winning the nomination: Please make sure to run against the inevitable war monger the Republicans will offer. That will be your job.
mai naem
I feel like in ’03 Dubbya went out to a puppy mill and bought a sick purebred puppy with fleas, ticks, worms,mange,distemper,rabies and a real problem with his lower intestine. This has resulted in the ticks literally sucking blood from us, rabies spreading to right wingers, and the unfortunate proclivity of this dog to keep on pooping bloody shit in the house. At times its solid poop, sometimes it exacerbates into diarrhea like now. We also continue to have fleas like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer.
Baud
@Citizen_X:
If Paul does manage to get himself elected, I hope he starts his presidency by deregulating auto safety.
Mandalay
The problem is that Goldberg threw a strawman at Clinton that she didn’t directly refute:
She should have directly challenged Goldberg to cite when and where he had publicly stated that this was his foreign policy, since the claim is bullshit. That said, the transcript clearly showed Clinton defending and praising Obama in that exchange, and pointing out that “Don’t do stupid stuff” was a political message, not a foreign policy.
I almost feel dirty defending Clinton, but in this specific case she did nothing wrong (apart from granting shitslime like Goldberg an interview).
Baud
@Kropadope:
Which Dem would you prefer over the GOP?
Suffern ACE
@Alex S.: she claims that a well vetted group of well armed America Backed Rebels could have both defeated Assad and if not, could have prevented ISIS and other groups from taking territory.
ralphb
My God, you old O-bots are really a bunch of stupid assholes. Have a nice day becoming Paultards.
moonbat
@Suffern ACE: Does she honestly believe that there is or was a rebel faction in Syria whose interests were directly aligned with those of the US?
rikyrah
Walmart Airgun Death Looks Worse Every Passing Day
Posted by Bob Owens on August 9, 2014 at 3:43 pm
The more we hear about the shooting death of John Crawford III inside a Beavercreek, Ohio Walmart, the worse it sounds. Evidence continues to suggest that Crawford was effectively SWATted by an ex-Marine.
Crawford was then killed by Beavercreek police officers that may have been amped up over the Marine’s apparently embellished description of what was occurring, and who may not have given Crawford a reasonable amount of time to comply with instructions to drop the BB gun.
We’d mentioned in our previous post on the subject that it appeared to us that Crawford had been SWATted by a former Marine and his wife.
http://bearingarms.com/walmart-airgun-death-looks-worse-every-passing-day/
Dog On Porch
“..when you are hunkering down and pulling back, you’re not going to make any better decisions than when you were aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward”.
Here’s hoping another democrat– a genuine democrat– will take her advice, and announce their candidacy for the 2016 nomination.
Funny how being drenched in other people’s blood doesn’t seem to bother certain people.
It’s not a mere spot of blood, either. Blood drips from her, she reeks of it, she swallows it with her food, she sips it with every swallow of water. She is shameless.
Cacti
@ralphb:
PUMA!
Rowwwwwwr!
Botsplainer
Again, on the subject of Hillary’s likely opponent.
Kropadope
@Baud: Well, I love my governor, Deval Patrick, who unfortunately said he would wait until 2020. Martin O’Malley looks like a good choice, though neither of these guys have a real foreign policy record, being governors. Senator Udall is doing excellent work with respect to the surveillance state.
Really, I would support anyone with a plausible resume who wasn’t reflexively pro-intervention anytime someone starts shooting somewhere else in the world.
Baud
@Dog On Porch:
Vince Foster never should have gotten involved with her.
Hunter Gathers
Hillary Clinton is the vehicle in which a radical conservative will ride to the White House in 2020. If she runs in 2016, unless she completely screws up, she’ll win by a very comfortable margin. She won’t be able to get anything passed legislatively that deals with domestic issues, so she’s going to have to start a war to show the Villagers that she can ‘work with Republicans to get things done’.
She’s still as hawkish as she was in 2008, which means she’ll be more than happy to cut the legs out from under a Democratic led Senate to join with GOPers and conservative Dems in order to get a war in the Middle East so she can prove how ‘tough’ she is. Her new war in the Middle East will have ‘bipartisan support’, meaning that conservatives from both sides came together to kill brown people who pray to the wrong god. And since it’s bipartisan, the Press will deem the war declaration as the greatest bipartisan achievement since Reagan, or some dumb ass shit like that.
Since during the debate during the run up to her little war will involve an absolute shit-ton of hippie punching and ignoring of the concerns of black, hispanic and asian voters, she’s not going to get support from either side when it blows up in her face. Which it will. Spectacularly. The conservatives she wooed to get the resolution to go to war passed in the first place will abandon her two seconds after the invasion begins, as is their wont. And after telling the so-called hippies and minority voters to go fuck themselves, she’ll get no support from them. The Press will drop her like a bad habit once the war goes to shit and they remember that she and her husband trashed the place a while back.
She’ll end up like LBJ in 1964 – totally fucked from every side. She’ll still get the nom in 2020, but enough Dems are going to be so fucking pissed off that if a billionaire ran on an anti-war platform as an independent, she’d loose an ass ton of votes to that billionaire. Which would put Ted Cruz in the White House. And smash the Democratic Party into a billion pieces.
The most important thing to remember about the Clintons is that they are total, complete fuck ups. Bill was a fuck-up who accomplished next to nothing in office, other than paving the way to wipe out all the economic gains made during his time in office. All he’s going to be remembered for is the blow job. Nothing else. Hillary fucked up a guaranteed win in 2008 by hiring shitty, stupid handlers, thinking that the Iraq war vote wasn’t going to hurt her, and sending her walking stereotype of a husband to tell black voters to go fuck themselves in South Carolina. Those two have accomplished nothing, and will continue to accomplish nothing.
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, the Likud shitstain Goldberg wrote this.
Well, I don’t trust him to have accurately quoted Clinton in context. Goldberg’s foul agenda is an Endlösung for the “Palestinian question” and a Palestinienrein Greater Israel.
Baud
@Kropadope:
Didn’t you just say that you would vote for the GOP candidate if Hillary were the nominee? Do you not hold them to this test?
Villago Delenda Est
@Botsplainer:
This is the most stupid thing that Paul could possibly say. Oh, racism isn’t pure enough for his ideology of radical individualism, aka feudalism. It’s (shudder) collectivist!
A quiet death in his bed is far too good for the likes of Ron Paul, or his shitstain spawn.
Suffern ACE
@moonbat: well, we would vet them. Now where all those people would go who wanted to fight the regime and were found wanting is beyond me. But our side would be trained with superior weapons I guess. So if those people who weren’t moderate enough to join our group decided to start their own group, we’d be ready for them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suffern ACE:
Might as well hope for the Avengers to intervene and set things right. Every bit as realistic as that notion.
patrick II
@srv:
That assertion would make much more sense if Fascism had actually been defeated. We defeated Hitler’s Germany, but Fascism lives on.
Kropadope
@Baud:
The Ds are better overall, but they already have the political landscape rigged against them and I don’t think having their reputation stained with Hillary’s foreign misadventures and domestic political failings will help them (short term, long term, any term).
Alex S.
@Emma:
Actually, I still think she’s the best nominee (of all available). It’s just that Obama is/was very, very good. Hillary is just saying what every republican candidate, but also most other national democrats would say. Obama is simply underappreciated and the world is blessed to have him. I’m going to sound a little whimsical, but…he’s doing it for us, the Obamabots.
Villago Delenda Est
@Citizen_X: Exactly. The GOP base is a bloodthirsty lot who want their raw meat in extra large portions, and will not touch tofu.
Baud
@Kropadope:
I don’t understand. You would vote for the GOP to protect the reputation of the Democratic party from a Hillary presidency?
Mandalay
@Alex S.:
The irony is that her plan to go after Assad, would have directly aided ISIS, and yet now she wants our troops to attack ISIS?
Why aren’t journalists jumping down her throat for her clueless and incoherent foreign policy? She loves Israel and stable dictatorships, and hates Iran, but on everything else she just bends with the wind.
It was crystal clear during the Iraq war that Condie Rice was in way over her head on foreign policy, and despite all the media praise for her SoS efforts, I’m not sure that isn’t true of Hillary Clinton as well.
Kropadope
@Baud: Sounds like you understand completely.
raven
@ralphb: Yea and you are a fucking genius.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay:
This is lifted, as a concept, directly from the neocon playbook, in which we supported the Shia against the Sunni inside Iraq, while supporting the Sunni against the Shia outside Iraq. The inherent contradiction in this eluded the neocons. We’re against Iran, they say, but they did everything in their power to give Iran a victory in the region by removing their most hated enemy, Sunni dominated Iraq.
Idiots. Doing stupid things…which Obama commented on.
cleek
@Emma:
this time in 2006, nobody suspected Obama would be The One. none of the polling from that time shows Obama above 1%.
there is no rush to find someone. really, there isn’t.
Bill E Pilgrim
Anyone who hired Mark Penn to run a Presidential primary campaign pretty obviously wasn’t a big follower of the “don’t do stupid shit” philosophy.
Suffern ACE
@Mandalay: it’s her stated desire to have this overall global fp theme that’s going to drive her insane. How about. “We control the oil” and. “No one else has power. ” That at least makes sense.
But if we want to continue to be the dominant power militarily and politically in east Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, east Africa, west Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the Western Hemisphere, we have to allow for a bit of situational confusion.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay:
She’s supporting their narrative. Nothing is more important than the narrative of the Village. Well, cocktail weenies are, but they support the narrative, too.
Villago Delenda Est
Duplicate comment, nuked!
Baud
@Kropadope:
I have to admit, that’s one of the most original rationales I’ve seen for voting against a Democratic candidate.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Villago Delenda Est: Good thing, all those cocktail weenies on the page were making me hungry.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
You Hillary Clinton’d that dupe!
Kropadope
@Baud: The awful Scott Brown beat the awful Martha Coakley here in MA for Senate. While that caused some short term losses, we managed to elect Elizabeth Warren to replace Scottie 2 years later. Worth the wait.
moonbat
@Suffern ACE: I’m just trying to picture the vetting process. A bunch of potential rebels lined up outside a large tent waiting their turn to be vetted to see if they are radical enough to topple Assad but nice enough to keep ISIS from hurting Christians or Shiite Muslims.
some guy
Infanticide or just bad targeting coordinates? Opinions differ.
Suffern ACE
@Villago Delenda Est: things that you see in the press that would make you question Israel’s actions in Gaza is due to manipulation by the Hamas PR unit.
Hillary almost had peace. Hamas ruined it. End of story.
Mandalay
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Not forgetting her devotion to Lanny Davis and James Carville. She must choose to surround herself with vile shitstains to make herself look good by comparison.
Baud
@Kropadope:
So you would have voted for Brown over Cloakly?
Maybe if we disband the Democratic party altogether, Jesus will finally return.
goblue72
@Hunter Gathers: I wish I could disagree with this assessment, but I can’t. Which is why Democrats need to quickly get their heads out of their rear ends and stop making the White House the be all and end all. We need firewalls – which means taking back the House AND – even more importantly – taking back the states, both Governorships and state legislatures. Its state legislatures that will get to re-draw legislative districts in 2020. We need to control the majority of those state legislatures by then. We have less than 6 years to accomplish that.
Look at the Rethuglicans. They’ve waged a Long War. They’ve got control of the judiciary, at all levels (SCOTUS, Appellate Courts, etc.). They’ve got control of the vast majority of state legislatures. They’ve used that power to gerrymander the House to create a 10-year GOP House firewall. There’s ZERO chance of us taking back the House before 2020. With the House completely locked up, all they got to do is chip away at the Senate and then wait for the White House to inevitably flip their way at some point while they fight a rearguard holding action until then. And if in the interim, our guys manage to get something done, their buddies in the black robes will trim the sails on whatever legislation Dems push through.
I’m not sure how we get there, but one immediately obvious issue in the current stalemate is that we can’t wait for some future brown wave to save us. (Don’t get me wrong, God Bless our brown brothers & sisters from preventing this country from going completely to heck). But fact still remains that white people outvote minorities in terms of % who vote. Part of this is the fact that the wealthier you are, the morel likely you are to vote – and in our apartheid country, white people have the higher incomes and that trendline is not changing anytime soon. Ditto for age – old people vote, and old people are more likely to be white. This stuff is slowly changing, but its not going to change over any immediate horizon.
That being said, given gender dynamics in national U.S. elections at this point, it does make a lot of sense to run a white woman at the head of the ticket. But we do need to figure out how to get white people to vote for Democrats in greater numbers. The vast geographic territory of the U.S. outside our urban cores are white-dominated population-wise, and our electoral system is rigged to favor the more sparsely populated parts of the country. We can’t keep trading one white vote for one brown vote and hope to win district-based elections (U.S. House, state legislatures)
Kropadope
@Baud: I sat that one out, IIRC. I may have written in zombie Ted Kennedy, though. I forget whether it was that one or the Markey one I sat out.
lamh36
Maya Angelou had a quote saying “when someone shows you who they are believe them”.
Disregarding the reporter/reporting is one thing (as some are doing in her defense) but when patterns emerge ignoring them or rationalizing them helps who exactly?
I guess I’m asking at what point do we take Hillary at her own word?
Necessary caveat on BJ of late…I will vote for the next Dem nominee.
As a much malign Obot I fully embrace the upcoming influx of the HRC-bots and I hope they can expect the same treatment here at BJ that the Obots have received. It’ll be interesting being on the supposed non-“dear Leader” side.
Also can’t wait to see the HRC-bots vs Glen-bot flame wars once GG sets his sights on the HRC presidency
hoodie
@Hunter Gathers:
Unfortunately, this is generally true. I really don’t dislike either one, but they’re kind of the Kardashians of dem politics, i.e., famous mostly for being famous and for really lousy personal choices. Hillary seems to be less of a fuckup than Bill, but she lacks his communication skills, which is probably why she made such egregious choices in running her ’08 campaign. That said, I can’t see another Dem who would beat her for 2014. Sherrod Brown would be my preference, but that won’t happen. Hope that Hillary would pick him for the VP slot.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay: Lanny Davis is the poster boy for slime. Carville sleeps with a Sith Apprentice to Darth Cheney.
JPL
I haven’t ruled out a Rand Paul victory. Paul will run on a populist message and against the Chamber of Commerce. He’s a chameleon and all he needs to win is Fox news touting his bile.
Lolis
By the time the presidential election rolls around, we will all be enthusiastic Hillbots because the Republican will be batshit crazy. Till then I will tepidly support HRC. I do think any Dem would win, but not by the margins Hillary will win by. Hillary will have huge Senate and House majorities to play with and do a decent job on picking Supreme Court nominees.
Kropadope
@Lolis: Hillary will be a drag on D candidates in 2016 and an anchor on the whole party by 2020 (a year when we need them to bring their best game).
raven
@Lolis: Put down the bong.
Kropadope
@raven:
Well, it is that time.
Amir Khalid
I’m not happy with Hillary’s reflexively pro-Israel position. I’m not sure she realises how bad being reflexively pro-Israel has been for American soft power in the Middle East. On principle, I tend to agree with Obama’s approach of letting other people’s fights play out with no US interference beyond addressing immediate humanitarian crises. If anything, it seems centuries overdue.
I think Hilary doesn’t quite get that in the Middle East, having Israel’s main ally/enabler America on your side can make you look bad. It means you endorse the superpower policies which put Israel first and you second, if ever. (The Arab world has itself not been the ally Palestine deserves, true, but still.) It turns people against you. It’s one big reason so many people despise the House of Saud.
America doesn’t have the room to declare its other friends and act for them precisely because, all too often and for reasons of domestic politics, it’s Israel’s enabling friend. Israel’s more extreme anti-Palestinian actors count on American politicians not daring to say no to them, and Bibi can scold the US for not obeying Israel. I think Obama’s caution reflects that among other things, as it must.
I would have brought all that up and asked Hillary, how should America go about reducing Israel’s drag on its ability to act for good in the Arab world?
Suffern ACE
Sometimes, even retired generals recommend doing stupid shit. Really, they do.
Now is not the time to extend negotiations. Now is the time to strike them down with our hand picked totally not terrorists any more exiled regime changers who would be secular and share our values!
Patrick
@Lolis:
I assume your post is sarcasm. If not, the results of the next redistricting won’t be effective until 2022. IOW, there for sure will be a Republican led House as of the 2016 election and most likely all the way thru 2020. The Senate is likely to go back into Dem hands in 2016. However, it will not be filibuster proof.
IOW, Hillary Clinton will have the same problems with Congress as Obama did.
We don’t know if Clinton will do a decent job of picking USSC appointees. But we do know that they will have to be approved by the Senate which could filibuster.
WereBear
Gee, there’s no pleasing some people.
The Clinton Administration did preside over an incredible economic boom, turned a deficit into a surplus, helped the world receive GPS and the Internet, reduced infant mortality to its lowest rate in US history, appointed a lot of women and POC to Cabinet posts, and defeated the terrorist Millennium plot.
And that’s just off the top of my head.
I think the Democratic Party biggest problem is how so many of its members think half a loaf is an insult. If it’s not freshly ground, organically grown, whole grains with a perfect split top and fresh out of the oven, they’ll just petulantly go hungry.
Their standards are just that high!
I’m getting very annoyed by it because it’s not marriage, adoption, or accepting a job offer. We have two choices and whining about it or throwing away one’s vote does no good at all.
I’m not apologizing for the abundant mistakes either of the Clintons made. But look at the accomplishments up top and compare them to the regulation-shredding, deadly-spinach & peanut butter enabling, budget-busting, tax-stealing, safety net-slashing, crippling debt optimization, and absolute blood bath of the Bush Administration.
Then tell me who you would vote for.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Mandalay: I know but I mean at least those others are fairly good at their jobs, Carville actually got Bill elected, for instance, Davis probably is fairly effective at helping whatever right wing dictator he’s helping and so on.
Penn is not only horrible and right wing, but utterly incompetent. And it’s not like that should have been a surprise, this is someone who had written one of few books I’d ever read whose thesis disproved itself within a few pages. “There are no macro trends anymore, it’s all “micro-trends”, small clumps of people following their own trends. Everyone is doing this, everyone. It’s so widespread and ubiquitous across the entire population it’s almost like a, what would you call that, something where everyone does the same thing… anyway, you can take that to the bank. “
rikyrah
@Hunter Gathers:
I can see this.
Bill E Pilgrim
@WereBear: Ah the old “if you have any criticism then just vote for a Republican, why don’t you” approach.
Mandalay
@JPL:
No way. Much as I prefer Paul’s foreign policy over Clinton, he would lose in a landslide. Clinton would paint him as a spineless appeaser presenting a massive threat to the security of the United States. This ad didn’t work against Obama (who had a solid record of opposing the invasion of Iraq), but it would surely work against Paul.
Since Clinton is in love with Israel, and somewhere to the right of Attilla the Hun on foreign policy generally, expect the Republican nominee for 2016 to be a totally deranged psychofuck.
Ted Cruz fits the bill nicely.
Kropadope
@WereBear:
So, what the Clinton administration accomplished was being present when remarkable technology improvements brought prosperity to millions of people, through no action of the Clinton administration.
The Clinton administration then laid the groundwork for the financial sector to prey on people’s optimism, leading to the 2008 financial crisis.
I suppose you credit Bill Clinton for nice weather, also?
WereBear
@Kropadope: While Al Gore did not invent the internet, he was instrumental in allowing civilians to use it. I guess they accidentally created the budget surplus. And if economic expansions “just happen” why don’t they ever, ever, ever, happen during Republican administrations?
Yes, I find your logic to be incomprehensible and apparently arrived at using the entrails of sheep. Hopefully from your local supermarket.
Patricia Kayden
@Kropadope: Yeah, I wonder what she meant by the U.S. is withdrawing from the world stage. Should we be involved in more military operations? Should we be arming more people? I’m quite happy with the measured way in which President Obama has handled foreign crises. I think America’s problem is that it has been way too involved in the world stage — with disastrous results.
Suffern ACE
@Patricia Kayden: ah, she says in the interview that most Americans jump to the conclusion that when the interventionists want engagement, they mean unilateral military engagement. That’s why she calls what she wants to do “smart power.” Mainly because we as a country don’t do ‘soft power’ very well at all, and that term probably doesn’t test well anyway.
Paula
@John Cole +0:
I guess not.
? Martin
@WereBear: They do happen during Republican administrations, but inevitably they trade those expansions for tax cuts or wars and wind up in worse shape than they started.
Mandalay
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Assumes facts not in evidence! Carville was part of Bill Clinton’s campaign team, certainly, but Bill Clinton hardly needed him to win. And apart from being part of Hillary Clinton’s dreadful 2008 campaign, what has Carville achieved since then?
Some people in life get lucky, and are in the right place at the right time, and then milk their mediocrity and 15 minutes of fame for all they can. I put James Carville in that category.
sharl
@rikyrah: Whoa, a thoughtful report from Bob Owen, fka Gun Counter Gomer, and former favorite target of TBogg and Sadly, No! (example). Is this a one-off? He actually used to work the gun counter at a department store IIRC, so he may actually be drawing from some insight here.
I grew up in those parts, specifically that side of Dayton (though within city limits in my case; but I know that shopping area well). I can’t say I’m totally surprised, though I am, sort of. This does remind me of fellow son-of-Dayton Jesse Taylor, whose darker hue led him into circumstances that I certainly never had to face there: A Young Black Man, Being Late.
Patricia Kayden
@JPL: Rand Paul could easily win the Republican nomination but there is no way he’d win the election. But perhaps I could be wrong since I just don’t see how Hilary can lose.
Patricia Kayden
@Suffern ACE: So “smart power” is another way of saying “coalition of the willing”? If so, we’ve tried that already.
rikyrah
@lamh36:
Tell me about it.
I’ll keep on saying this..
I don’t trust Hillary Clinton on foreign policy.
and, I want for someone who is Pro-Hillary Clinton to write below and tell me what foreign policy decisions of President Obama’s that you don’t like..
that Hillary Clinton would have gotten better.
Just askin’.
Cassidy
You see, what had happened was…
rikyrah
Someone up above that we need to get more White people to vote..
I simply disagree.
We need to get the non-White voter participation levels to White participation levels.
Black folk are already there.
If Latinos and Asians were to get to the same rate, it’d be all over for the GOP.
I mean Texas would be blue all over for them.
WereBear
@? Martin: I’m reminded of the late John Callahan’s autobiography, in which he stated the “crip’s view of politics,” to wit: It took forever for him to get a wheelchair repair done during a Republican administration, but he got good service from the Democrats.
And that sums it up very succinctly.
the Conster
@Amir Khalid:
She’ll never question Israel’s position vis a vis US foreign policy. When was the last time you heard the name Haim Saban? 2008 maybe?
Patricia Kayden
@Epicurus: Your last sentences are why I will be voting for Secretary Clinton. Whatever her faults, she is way better than anything on the other side. A President Rand Paul, President Ted Cruz, President Chris Christie, etc., would be a true horror for minorities, women, the uninsured, the poor, immigrants, and gays. Anything gained during the Obama years would be reversed and extreme rightwing Justices would be appointed to the Supreme Court.
I just hope Mrs. Clinton doesn’t tick off too many Democrats by over criticizing President Obama. Despite his current poll numbers, he still has a strong following among many of those who voted for him twice.
Dog On Porch
@Baud: “Vince Foster never should have gotten involved with her”.
Bravo.
Irrational attacks on H.C. have always been just that, irrational. God knows she’s spent a career making political hay of them.
But irrational attacks do not serve to absolve her of the prominent (and unrepentant) role she played in unleashing the disasterous 2003 Iraq War.
Hob
@Bill E Pilgrim: WereBear’s complaint may be a little too broad, but it’s funny that the sarcastic straw-man version you just made up is actually an exact description of someone on this thread. I mean, Kropadope is literally someone who claims to be voting Republican because Hillary isn’t good enough. That may not be a common point of view in the real world but it’s hard to miss on the Internet, so I can see why WereBear’s frustration is coming from.
Mandalay
@rikyrah: It’s a sad reflection of our times that I’m pleasantly surprised to learn that the Walmart’s instore video was not lost or destroyed or unavailable:
It’s not a good sign for the police that we are not seeing what is on that video.
FlipYrWhig
You know whose campaign involved promises to crush international terrorism even if it meant running roughshod over national sovereignty? Barack Obama’s. Everyone calm the hell down. Is there a high-profile Democrat who _wouldn’t_ talk tough on foreign policy? Even Warren was vocally pro-Israel. I think Clinton might occasionally overcompensate rhetorically, probably because she knows people are looking for reasons to say she’s a girl and hence literally doesn’t have the balls, but what you’re complaining about is the consensus view of the ambitious politicians in this party. Whatever “Anyone But Hillary” candidate emerges won’t be differentiating her- or himself on foreign policy. Count on it.
AxelFoley
@lamh36:
This.
And especially this.
Mandalay
@Kropadope:
Let me guess what your job is. Are you a cherry picker?
raven
@FlipYrWhig: Wait, you mean it’s all bullshit???
drkrick
@WereBear:
The tech boom that Clinton arguably lucked into had a lot to do with it. And as much as we may hate to admit it, a GOP controlled Congress did, too. If the administration had legislative partners willing to spend on their priorities, spending might have been significantly higher. It most certainly was not an achievement of the executive branch alone.
gogol's wife
@lamh36:
Oh, don’t worry, President Hillary will dissolve the CIA and the NSA on Day One.
EZSmirkzz
Before reading the interview you may want to re-read “This Town”, by Leibovich, especially dealing with the Villagers perceptions of themselves and each other, and their perception of we the people, particularly, as being stupid, which given the peoples willingness to send the same ignorant asses back to DC election after election may not be too far fetched.
That being said, the idea that the situation in Syria and Iraq is a binary one involving the US and rebels is utter nonsense, Saudi Arabia would have had us arming the very people now running amuck and Brennam et al would have profited from the sales of arms and machinery, if not lobbying/consulting fees.
Clinton is trying to put distance between herself and Obama for her own run at the Presidency, McCain and the has beens are doing the same thing to salve their consciences, which Clinton may very well be doing as well, for having gone in and stirred up more trouble than they could handle in the region, just so they could tell us and the world that they were players. The bandwagon is still out of tune.
The fact that such losers are listened to, and considered for such high office is beyond me. That is public relations and marketing, not rational democracy at work, and like it or not, the field on which this game is being played out on, with the expectation that the American people are still being suckers, reborn every minute.
The conventional wisdom in DC is anything but wisdom, but it is conventional for all of the talking heads and half assed Senators to show just how stupid they can really be, to those of us willing to spend a little time and learn about the various factors involved in the Middle East. DC is only the place in the world where an array has all of two elements, ego and pride.
Kazanir
This kind of thing is especially frustrating because “organizing principles” are somehow promoted as a better, improved circle of thinking beyond “just” “not doing stupid shit”, but without any mention of the fact that plenty of empires have let their “organizing principles” lead them straight into doing stupid shit and justifying it so hard that they can’t see the knock-on effects for years or decades.
I know the differences here are overstated a bit but this reminds me of 2008 and how much I didn’t want to vote for Hillary then, either.
lol
@cleek:
About this time in 2006, Obama was making a huge splash in Iowa for the Harkin Steak Fry and campaign staff were angling to be in the best position to be hired by him after the mid-terms. I know the narrative is that he “came out of nowhere”, but it was a pretty open secret that he was planning to run. What came out of nowhere was his chances of beating her.
So if you’re not satisfied with the Clinton alternatives already in the mix, I wouldn’t plan on being satisfied a year from now either. No one else is going to jump in that hasn’t already been testing the waters. Hell, I’d expect to see even fewer options once the mid-terms pass and it starts coming time to staff up in early primary states.
Southern Beale
The Democrats have no one else so get used to HRC and work your ass off to elect less hawkish Dems to the House and Senate to temper any warmongering she may be inclined to do. That’s the only solution.
Kropadope
@Hob:
No, because she’s awful. The worst.
rikyrah
Red-light cameras a case study in Chicago corruption, waste and failure
21 Jul 2014
Austin Berg
Chicago has the most red-light cameras of any city in the country. Since 2003, the city’s 352 cameras have levied nearly half a billion dollars in fines.
These cameras are sold to the public as a way to promote traffic safety, but the real outcome of the city’s program has been to grift lawful drivers while making sweetheart deals with poorly run companies.
The Chicago Tribune is now reporting that cameras throughout the city have burdened thousands of Chicagoans with wrongfully issued $100 tickets over the last five years, at least.
After analyzing 4 million tickets issued by the cameras since 2007, Tribune reporters David Kidwell and Alex Richards found instances of dramatic, arbitrary spikes in the number of drivers ticketed by the cameras.
It’s not surprising.
The company that installed and operated the cameras, Redflex, was fired last year after admitting to “likely” paying $2 million in bribes to Madigan-insider John Bills. Redflex was supposed to have monitored its system for spikes like this, but that never happened.
The improper tickets were caused by shortened or irregular yellow-light patterns, as well as error-prone analysis of rolling stops on right turns. The wrongful right-turn tickets were caused by limitations of the cameras’ technology. It’s just too difficult to tell if a car has come to a complete stop, is inching forward to see if it’s clear to make the turn or if these maneuvers are at all unsafe.
As for the irregular yellow lights, experts consulted by the Tribune could think of only two explanations:
“Either someone deliberately tinkered with cameras to generate more tickets, or the system malfunctioned repeatedly, resulting in wrongful citations. Those anomalies, they said, should have been detected and addressed.”
A Tribune case study showed a one-second shortening of a Lincoln Avenue yellow light generating 100 tickets over a 12-day boon.
Evidence as to whether red-light cameras improve traffic safety is mixed at best. Some research suggests that red-light cameras increase the number of crashes at intersections. An audit of Chicago’s program by the Inspector General’s office found no evidence that the program increased the safety of city streets.
.
http://www.illinoispolicy.org/red-light-cameras-a-case-study-in-chicago-corruption-waste-and-failure/?utm_source=outbrain#sthash.JVnfIiW3.dpuf
Emma
@WereBear: I asked the same question and I got bubkas. Maybe you’ll have better luck.
mai naem mobile
I frankly don’t care what HRCs foreign policy is. It will never be as bad as Dubbyas and even Hillary knows Americans are not interested in more foreign entanglements. Say what you will about the Clintons, they pay attention to public opinion. Nope, what really worries me about the Clintons is their closeness to Wall Street.
Emma
@rikyrah: One thing. Though I agree with you that a minority coalition could deal with the “we need white people to vote” idea, you are assuming that they will all vote Democrat.
WereBear
@Kropadope: Worse than Mitt “the Chinese put barbed wire around their factories isn’t that great” Romney?
Worse than Walnuts “Bomb bomb Iran” McCain?
Worse than Ron “Racism and murder is fine if it’s the state not the Feds” Paul?
Yeah. Right.
Mandalay
@EZSmirkzz:
Clinton didn’t go quite that far in the interview, but she certainly chose to give a “them against us” emphasis:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/
She’s spouting complete nonsense, on a par with Bush’s “They hate us for our freedom” idiocy, but the Village doesn’t call her on it.
Kropadope
@WereBear:
So, first you cite something from before Clinton’s presidency, something that by definition must have.
The lucky circumstances I described were primarily responsible for that. I’m sure the tax increases helped, but god knows those extra taxes were never applied to anything useful. The deficit was eliminated, but we didn’t pay down the debt or invest in any worthy priorities.
This question is framed around a false assertion. Economic expansions are squandered by Republicans. Republicans seldom do anything to encourage such expansions (well, not in any sustainable way). However, they do happen.
the Conster
@WereBear:
I mentioned Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown and Martin O’Malley, upthread, if any of them decide to run.
FlipYrWhig
@raven: Most things are!
El Caganer
JG: So which military interventions would you support, Mrs. Clinton?
HRC: All of them, Jeffrey.
raven
@FlipYrWhig: wink
Amir Khalid
@Kropadope:
It’s been said here a lot that, as things stand now, the worst Democratic politician the US could elect as President — even Hillary — would still be far better than the best Republican. As a foreigner, I would agree. Whom among the latter party’s current favourites, I ask you, would you trust to have a better Middle East policy than Hillary’s?
FlipYrWhig
@the Conster: Do you have any reason to think that those three people wouldn’t also be talking about the possibility of using military force to neutralize threats and curtail instability around the world? Because as far as I can tell, _that’s how Democrats sound_ when they’re asked about this kind of stuff. Obama famously sounded different, at the beginning at least, but even he was promising to straighten things out in Afghanistan and get tough with Pakistan and transnational terrorist groups. This is the sound of “credibility.” Would that it weren’t so! But it is. Sound another way and you’ve Kuciniched yourself into irrelevancy.
FlipYrWhig
@Amir Khalid: The next good Middle East policy will be the first good Middle East policy.
Suffern ACE
@Mandalay: that said, that Is Our reason to be interested in them. My guess is that in the 2016 debates, questions are going to be asked on whether or not the candidates are going to have to recognize the new ISIS government of Syria and the number of troops we are going to be sending to Jordan. Yeah, it sounds like she’s saying “they’ll be at the bradenberg gates” if we don’t fight them over there. But if we need some reason, the fall of Syria will trigger it.
EZSmirkzz
@Mandalay: Agreed. What pray tell is the “West”? If rational thinking forms the basis of democracy and the “west”, then it is sorely missing in DC, and other capitals in that region I might add. President Clinton once said the greatest danger to world peace was religious wars, and yet the rhetoric being pushed out of the Village is hardly designed to constrain it, and more than likely to exacerbate it, all for the purpose of letting the educated beyond their intelligence crowd in DC to be involved in something BIG!
I’m beginning to think I ought to join them in not listening to what they say either.
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig: Now don’t go getting all logical here at Balloon-Juice. Remember, the Clintons were once mean to Barak Obama and must pay a price. Since losing the ’08 nomination apparently was not enough, HRC must be further punished – all this before we get to see what the Democratic field looks like and how HRC compares to those who actually have the ambition and skill to run.
Kropadope
@WereBear:
My problems with Hillary are precisely my problems with Mitt Romney, who was, himself, a perfect distillation of what was wrong with the Republicans. The militarism, the lies, the win-at-all-costs attitude. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, both sides really do do it. Please don’t make Democrats a mirror-image of the Rs.
Please tell me one foreign intervention that McCain wanted that Hillary didn’t. If that crap is gonna happen, I’d rather let the Rs put their stamp on it.
Yes, YES, a thousand times yes!!! He’s awful, but he’s way better than she is.
Amir Khalid
@FlipYrWhig:
Then I’ll rephrase my question to Kropadope:
Keith G
@lamh36:
Obots maligned….here at BJ? Really?
Now that is a persecution complex.
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: yeah. “Well, we’ve done statistical analysis, and you’re still far more likely to die in your shower than be killed in the subway in the terrorist attack we have each month” hasn’t worked to calm voters down anywhere that I know of.
Emma
@the Conster: Of the three, which one has the best chance of pulling an Obama and bringing himself to the attention of all the non-political junkies out there?
(added) and do we know anything about their foreign policy views?
(added later) and do they have the ambition and the warchest?
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
There’s a world of difference between “would utilize military assets sometimes” and “would go all in every time.”
? Martin
@Suffern ACE: That’s because the GOP exerts so much energy in making everyone terrified of everything.
Amir Khalid
@Kropadope:
I think this opinion is in the minority here.
Kropadope
@Amir Khalid: Well, it’s mine.
Cassidy
@lamh36: I’m still betting on the front pagers deciding they just have to support Rand with much emotion and fanfare.
El Caganer
@Amir Khalid: Regarding ME, pretty much every major party candidate sucks, depending on what you include in ME. If you include Iran, one politician stands high above the rest, and that’s the current President, who may be on the verge of concluding a treaty with the Persians despite the bitter opposition of the Israeli and Saudi governments and their stooges in Congress and the State Department. If he gets that done, it would be a game-changer and a terrific foreign policy coup.
Keith G
@Amir Khalid:
Your statement is accurate, I am just making it moreso.
WereBear
@the Conster: It’s not that I wouldn’t love to vote for the most progressive candidate our country can find. But the whole country is voting for President. And so, even the most progressive candidate is not going to look and present like that Dream Date we progressives want.
If people were eager to vote for progressive candidates we’d have a bunch of popular ones to choose from, wouldn’t we? But we’ve got a lot of racist, bitter, mean, petulant, and flat out delusional people who vote, and an equal number of clueless morons who don’t know who to vote for if you hung a neon-LED sign on them, and another population chunk who love change as long as it arrives taking teeny tiny steps with long pauses in between.
I read a book about the Obama Presidency in which an anonymous staffer stated that the President was a “stone-cold liberal.” And I completely believe that.
But even an incredibly smart and extremely personable candidate like Barack Obama is not going to run that way. It’s sure defeat.
Anoniminous
In the early polling Clinton’s lowest number is 57%, her highest is 77%, and the average is ~64%. The next highest flips between Biden and Warren at ~10% – more or less, plus or minus.
In August 2005 the polling was:
Granted one name is significant by its absence. Even so, I submit ~65% support is way better than 40%* and even granting something could come along and change the situation at THIS point there’s no one out there who can beat her. The polling is telling us that at THIS point there’s no room for an insurgent or ‘below the radar’ candidate to succeed. People have made up their minds about her – which wasn’t entirely true in 2005-2007.
However, I will point out, the general feeling among Democrats in 2005 – 2007 that either Obama or Clinton were acceptable. Obama won because he had the better campaign, the better staff and the winning strategy.
* by 25 points! (Teh mathz. I can do them. :-)
WereBear
Aaaaaand the last bit of sense in the argument winked out, like a light turned off at the bottom of the ocean.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: You seriously overestimate the likelihood of going in with guns blazing into every conflict. I don’t think even Burns McCain and Smithers Graham would do that, regardless of how they talk when they know they don’t have to make that decision themselves.
the Conster
@FlipYrWhig:
They’re all going to say what they have to say to be considered “serious” about terrorism and Israel, but none of them have been as thoroughly bought and paid for as Hillary, both by Wall Street and AIPAC. She’s a neocon. The other three can make the progressive arguments better than she can as well- particularly Brown, who would carry Ohio. Hillary has learned nothing that gives this old progressive a spark. As a woman, I see her as a powerful symbol like Obama and that may be enough to win this time, but she’s never going to be able to make the forceful compelling progressive arguments for labor, the environment and education like the others I mentioned. I don’t care that she would be the first woman president – I only care about getting a president to build on the foundation that Obama has built virtually by himself, and champion it! Pick up the banner and grow some fucking balls and advocate for us! If Hillary wanted to really govern this country – which will take a Democratic coalition – instead of win the title of president, she’d be talking up the ACA and the stock market and the jobs growth. She may be the only one who could have coat tails, but only if she can champion progressive causes sincerely, and sadly she can’t. Complain all you want about us Hillary kneecapping Obots, we deserve better than her.
rikyrah
@Emma:
The Asian American community has even a larger concentration of immigrants in their community than do Latinos.
I’m Black and hear every anti-immigrant dogwhistle being thrown out there.
Am I really to believe that Latinos and Asians can’t hear it either?
Never forget, Asians, who are the so-called ‘model minority’, voted for Barack Obama in an even higher percentage than Latinos did.
You think the GOP has done anything to change the circumstances of that?
Mandalay
@Keith G:
Quite. And if you dare to criticize Obama for anything all hell is unleashed.
NobodySpecial
The only chance for Democrats to start undoing statehouse level damage, unfortunately, is to let Hillary govern as her Republican lite self and use the coattails to hold the Senate and possibly make some gains in the House. The cynical and likely play is for people to attach themselves as closely to Hillary as they can while simultaneously distancing from Obama in some trivial matters, and ride the wave.
Also, she’ll really please a lot of Juicers, because they’re really good at being Republican lite when it suits them.
rikyrah
@the Conster:
Amen
Amen
Amen
James E. Powell
@Hunter Gathers:
The most important thing to remember about the Clintons is that they are total, complete fuck ups.
More coarse than I would have put it, but more or less accurate. Some view Bill Clinton’s years as a courageous rear-guard action against the right-wing revanche. Others view it as a series of surrenders.
Their greatest achievements were running and getting elected at the right times. Bill prevented a second GHW Bush administration that would have been wholly owned by the emerging Newt Gingrich & Tom Delay. Hillary made sure that we didn’t get a NY senator chosen by Alfonse D’Amato. Other than that, when I look at those two, I don’t see greatness. I don’t even see either one reaching for greatness.
My biggest concern with Hillary Clinton is that I do not think she can win. To this day, it is hard to say what she stands for, other than everything right-wingers and center-right voters fear and despise. I don’t like going into a campaign with a candidate who has negatives as high as hers are.
Our only hope resides in the continued insanity of the Republican Party regulars who decide the nominee.
NobodySpecial
@the Conster: We’ll put your ‘deserve’ tombstone right next to the one makred ‘Single Payer’.
Kropadope
@WereBear: Sorry, I’d rather have someone I generally disagree with who appears to be using their head and being straight with me than someone who agrees with me on a category of policy, but appears to have bad motives and little sense. I don’t expect a Ron Paul presidency to go very well, but when choosing between two catastrophic national mistakes, might as well choose the one that won’t direct the blowback at your priorities.
It’s like 1 step forward then 3 back vs. two back then three forward.
the Conster
@Emma:
I don’t know, but my suggestion to any of those three – especially Sherrod Brown who would win Ohio – would be to start making running noises, and align themselves with Elizabeth Warren. Go to Iowa with her, and adopt “her” themes. Give Hillary a huge fucking kick in the ass, and one of these good government white guys should partner with Warren – she’s a tremendous asset to go unused just because she’s not going to run. She’s the only natural successor to Obama in her ability to connect with people, and make the progressive argument. Democrats need to figure out how to be a progressive Voltran whether Hillary runs or not, and I hope she doesn’t.
WereBear
@Kropadope: This is exactly what I’m talking about.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU. IT’S NOT ABOUT WHO YOU LIKE.
I had a similar discussion with a friend who asked who I’d voted for in a recent election. I said the Democrat. They said that person is awful… an ego-maniac who hogs the spotlight. I said sure, but their policies made a lot more sense than the Republican, who was a sweet person but their only economic ideas were “cut taxes.”
You vote for the policy. Not the person.
That’s Politics 101… if you want to get things done.
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
She was one of the ones beating the war drums for Syria years before Obama would openly consider it. She was also in a much better position advance this policy than Sen. McCain, given our Constitutional disorder with respect to war.
Aimai
@Baud: you are on to this asshole. His stated political convictions are purely for show or else completely incoherent. He is no democratic voter.
Kropadope
@Mandalay:
I’m sure everyone here manages to get maligned for one ideological foible or another. Balloon Juice is a big tent.
the Conster
@rikyrah:
I was actually hearing Billy Bragg sing The Internationale in my head when I wrote that, but amens work too.
Patrick
@WereBear:
Yup. Which is why for me it will come down to the least of two evils. Is it worth voting for? We will find out. The campaign hasn’t even started yet. I will make up my mind after I hear her speak, specially about foreign policy issues such as Israel and Iraq.
Mandalay
@James E. Powell:
Well she certainly doesn’t stand for “everything right-wingers and center-right voters fear and despise”; she is virtually a neocon on foreign policy, she’s never met a Wall Street banker she didn’t like, and she tried to make burning the flag illegal. There’s plenty for FoxNews viewers to love about that.
But I share your doubts on whether she can win. She not that different to Mitt Romney-in-a-pantsuit in some respects, and it’s not unthinkable that Ted Cruz could beat her in a debate. And while she has a track record, that also means she has a lot of baggage. She may be the strong hypothetical favorite at the moment, but I don’t think victory is assured at all.
Shortstop
@Amir Khalid: I wish we could clone you.
Brian R.
We’ve known Clinton didn’t like the “don’t do stupid shit” mantra for a while now.
She paid that moron Mark Penn a fortune to run her presidential campaign, remember?
raven
Two Minutes of Puppy Sneezing.
Comrade Luke
@WereBear:
What policies of Hillary Clinton do you support?
the Conster
@the Conster:
“Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all”
Kropadope
@Aimai:
That’s right. Having voted in every general election since 2002, I have voted for 3 Republicans vs. 4 Democrats in elections for top-line positions (Congress folk or governor/president). Democrats only pulled ahead because of my straight D ticket in 2012.
Voting a straight partisan line with no standards basically begs the political class for corruption. If your partisan affiliation can absolve you of any sin with your base on election day, corrupt officials become entrenched. If you’re willing to forgive failures in advocacy or implementation of your preferred policies, there’s no incentive to implement your preferred policies or do so well/completely. The politician can now use your shared values against their opponent for years or even generations.
Anne Laurie
@the Conster:
And if you can’t get your pony, you’ll hold your breath till you die, and that will show us!
Repubs are doing their best to tank the stock market and destroy what jobs growth we’ve gotten, along with their better-publicized efforts to break the ACA. Clinton, like any sensible politician, doesn’t want to be standing under the bucket of liquid manure the GOP is trying to balance atop the door marked ‘Election 2016’, so she’s not gonna rush into defending today’s economic snapshot when she’s not even a candidate yet. If Cruz & Paul & Ryan & their idiot associates manage to fvck up the Wall Street tables before 2015, I want HRC arguing about what we should do in 2016, not what President Obama should’ve/could’ve done in the past.
sdhays
@JPL: Rand Paul strikes me as uniquely positioned to broaden the Republican tent and expand the Republican world-view. He’s the one Republican politician who seems to have some concept of the sort of things that need to be done to pull the party out of it’s bubble implosion and how the party might get there.
But he’s just not anywhere near smart enough or talented enough to pull it off. To pull something like this off, you need a pied piper to mesmerize the rats, an energetic visionary who can think on his feet, someone who can get you excited even if you disagree with him. This is very important since where the party needs to go involves upsetting major factions of the Republican Party, especially the neo-cons. Rand Paul just doesn’t fit that bill, and the rabid right wing simply won’t follow anyone less than the reincarnation of Reagan anywhere other than further right.
Mandalay
@Anne Laurie:
Can you clarify? On its face that claim does not seem plausible or credible, if only because Republicans don’t seem to be doing much of anything at all, but maybe I am missing something.
Kropadope
@Mandalay: see: manufactured debt ceiling crises
sdhays
I’ve been trying to reconcile myself to Hillary being the Democratic nominee, but this interview has ended that. Her views on foreign policy are terrible. She has learned nothing. I expect I could support her domestic agenda (whatever that will be), but foreign-policy-wise, NO.
Hillary’s biggest problem has always been that she was captured by the DC elite (either willingly or accidentally) and she thinks like them. America should always be asserting itself in every regional crisis, except the ones that we don’t care about, like, for example, CAR, otherwise we’re “stepping back from the international stage” or “being isolationist”.
That she would have armed the “good rebels” in Syria is just astoundingly stupid! Syria is a terrible situation, but Obama’s hands-off approach (to the extent that it truly is “hands-off”) has given us the only real “win” we’ve had in the Middle-East in a long time: the destruction of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons. Honestly, everyone won there, including Assad. Would we have gotten that result if the US was arming the rebels; I think there’s a good reason to doubt that.
I’ll vote for the Democratic nominee in 2016, but I will not vote for her in the primary.
the Conster
@Anne Laurie:
Fuck that noise, AL. Really. She’s a political coward, distancing herself from Obama. You think it’s A-OK and just being sensible. I think it shows she’s STILL a triangulating coward playing the race card, instead of speaking to and about the amazing accomplishment that was the game changing ACA – the Democratic party’s singular accomplishment (thanks Obama!), which is basically the only thing the middle class had go their way in the past 6 years – except for all of the myriad other times that Obama was the only one putting money IN people’s pockets through minimum wage hikes, regulatory changes, LGBT rights, etc etc.. The stock market is at historic highs, employment rate has recovered – in metrics, but still, thanks Obama! (literally!) Instead Hillary’s crying poor and is the poor poor victim of that mean old GOP instead of promoting Obama’s accomplishments in any but the most of grudging and elliptical of ways? WTF?
Maybe Joe Biden will run.
A Humble Lurker
@Keith G:
If you mean by ‘once mean’ an entire wiki full of dogwhistling, then yeah.
Do Hillary supporters not realize how damning ‘but she’s better than the Republican’ sounds? Or how ridiculous that argument is after Obama not only beat her but his Republican opponent while everyone would not shut up about how if Hillary didn’t win the Democrats wouldn’t win?
If Hillary hasn’t learned anything from 2008 (which she doesn’t appear to have so far) and if the Republicans haven’t learned anything from 2008 (which they obviously haven’t) it wouldn’t take another Barack Obama for some other Democrat to beat Hill and then their Republican opponent.
Kay
There’s a genuine disagreement here, though:
This is Clinton:
And here’s Obama:
“Has always been a fantasy” is strong language.
These two aren’t going to have any more debates, but if they did I imagine they’d go at it pretty good on this.
Suffern ACE
Foreign policy will be a big deal in this election, if only because Hillary was SoS. It’s her major qualification now. I hope that it isn’t a big deal, though. We have no idea what the domestic issues are going to be. For all we know, the house and senate in republican hands will create a huge mess and no one will want to hear about Syria.
Cassidy
Yeah, but those don’t fit into the “white people problems” that has been the priority of Balloon Juice for quite some time.
moonbat
@the Conster: On the nose you have hit it. We deserve better than her.
Tell me how is what Clinton has done on foreign policy positioning different that Brian Schweitzer has done on the ACA? And he was universally reviled here on BJ for refusing to to support Obama’s signature legislative achievement.
Hillary was “inevitable” last time too, I recall. I’m going to wait a bit before pledging allegiance.
Kay
@Suffern ACE:
I don’t really agree that Democrats try to outdo Republicans on hawkishness. I think Democrats have to a certain extent internalized the idea that foreign policy is somehow more serious and presidential than domestic issues – bold strokes, leaders Making Decisions. I always thought that’s what the Mommy Party jeering from Republicans was really about – not to make Republicans look stronger or more decisive, but an attempt to trivialize the issues that Democrats (generally) make progress on.
I wish I didn’t think Democrats themselves buy into it, but I think they do. Some of that is structural. Domestic issues do require a more collaborative and gradual approach because the President has less unilateral power there, but I don’t know why Democrats allow Republicans to define “Presidential ” in that narrow way.
Mandalay
@Kay:
It’s also entirely appropriate. We had boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, and spent a fortune arming and training their armies. The results of that effort have been lamentable and disastrous.
So Clinton’s notion that without any boots on the ground in Syria we could have successfully armed and trained “doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth” in a few months to defeat Assad is more than a fantasy; it is absurd and idiotic. Clinton is a dangerous clown on foreign policy. Thank God it’s Obama, not her, running the show.
the Conster
@moonbat:
Amen
Amen
Amen
WereBear
@Comrade Luke: She’s genuine about human rights and feminism (based on brief personal encounters) and is very smart and hard working (per members of her staff who I know are likewise.) That already puts her streets ahead of whatever breathing hairball the Republicans throw up.
Yes, I know all her downsides, but when she and Bill reached the White House, they tried very hard to bring medical insurance reform, the gay rights advancement, and many other progressive dreams. Did they sell out or hold the line? We can argue that all day.
But to me, it’s undeniable that:
a) she can win
b) she can drag a lot of Democrats along with her
c) Bill may be a hound-dog (as we say in the South) but he gives a helluva speech and can whip up crowds
d) she’s been beaten on by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy longer and harder than anyone on earth, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s itching for payback
AND, yes, last but not quite least
e) she’s a woman, and that will drive people to the polls.
When people vote, we win.
Kropadope
@WereBear:
Yeah, good luck with that.
Way to make molehills out of mountains.
Hillary 2016!!! Both sides actually do it.
Kay
@Mandalay:
I don’t really understand what she’s saying. I’m not a big fan of “country as person” arguments, like this one:
Betty Cracker
@Cassidy: That’s because you’re a moron.
@Kay: Contrary to the kerfluffle occasioned by how Goldberg positioned the piece, that was the only genuine point of disagreement between the two in the piece.
I’m glad Obama was in charge because I think we have no business getting up in Syria’s shit. But is funneling arms on the QT to approved groups all that different? I don’t think there’s a big difference between PBO and HRC on foreign policy.
Cassidy
@Betty Cracker: And your a brainless cunt. Stick to your suburbia problems sweetheart.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: It’s still disturbing to me. I see in her remarks the same naive, perverse romanticism of the liberal hawks (Tony Blair first and foremost) that good intentions not only justify military intervention, they will somehow make historic and cultural realities disappear. The kumbaya-ism PUMAs accused Obama of, only on an international scale with bunker busters and blowback.
Patrick
@Betty Cracker:
Whether we should attack Iraq pre-emptively or not comes to mind as a big difference…
WereBear
@Kropadope: Dude, gotta admire the way you keep your head in heated Internet discussions. Even though I’m being awfully sarcastic and provocative.
Still, I must wonder if you are aware than Ron Paul would love to re-install Confederacy 2.0 nationwide? That he’s against the Federal government doing stupid things like the Drug War and invading privacy but he’s totally okay with a State doing it? That he is a global warming denier, wants to eliminate birthright citizenship, and has the morals of a rabid weasel?
Gosh. You really do dislike Hillary Clinton.
Keith G
@A Humble Lurker: And yet (though all of this is way too early to tell) she could well be the person necessary to protect Obama’s policy legacy.
Kay
@goblue72:
I always though Clinton’s appeal to white people who are not already voting for the Democrat was over-stated. In the context of a primary against the black person it mattered, but that’s among Democrats. I always thought that campaign’s confidence that she would be competitive against an R in Appalachia in a general election was nonsense. They’re not temporarily disenchanted Democrats. They’re Republicans.
There is no “other map”. There’s just the Obama map. The Clinton map is a thing of the past. It was almost a thing of the past when Bill Clinton ran it, and that was a long time ago.
I worry about her in places like Colorado, too, although she’ll be popular in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Right, but she thinks it’s different. She thinks there’s some special power inherent in a public show of support or strength by the US. That strikes me as very different.
Carolinus
I’m going to vote for whoever the Democratic nominee happens to be, but I’m really not happy with what Hillary did in that interview w/ respect to ISIS/L. I guarantee you what she will now be frequently cited by McCain, Graham, and every other Republican as an administration insider endorsement of their “Obama is ultimately responsible for these monsters and all the death & destruction they’ve wrought” idiocy. Also, this feels somewhat like Robert Gates style ass-hattery, in that she’s the fmr Secretary of State crapping on the foreign policy efforts of the current SoS (Iran policy for example), while the administration she served in is still in power.
Kropadope
@WereBear: Hey, I love the idea of decentralization. Why should we miss out on nice things here for another states resistance? Not everything needs to be done on a national scale. Maybe fewer things should be. Let people make their own mistakes. It’s better than being cursed to inaction by everyone being afraid of each other’s mistakes and the legislature moving nowhere.
Sure, things will get bad in some places, but the places that can manage themselves responsibly would be wise to use this to their advantage. The strong infrastructure that creates a basis for sustained economic activity, the respect for labor, the protections against random events derailing your life, the respect for people making decisions involving their own personal lives, the cultural vibrancy, and many other factors will make it clear to anyone with a drop of common sense where it’s good to live and do business. This could create a strong model for what best practices are in policy making.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It bothers me more because that’s the narrative, that’s what “Americans” are supposedly feeling, that we’re not “leading” and this is upsetting us. I know it’s upsetting pundits. That much is clear. I just don’t know if I buy that we’re all just really sad that we’re not “telling our own story” in the ME.
Are we? I think generally people “hunker down” because they feel they are at risk. My sense is any “hunkering” going on is much more immediate and close to home than some long-arc hankering for the US to lead in the ME.
Sam
“That said, my major concern about HRC is her hawkishness.”
That’s why she would be better than Obama. She wouldn’t hesitate to defend America.
Dog On Porch
@Anne Laurie: “Repubs are doing their best to tank the stock market and destroy what jobs growth we’ve gotten..”.
Ann: That caliber of subversion (i.e. financial manipulations) has always been a given. But it’s a pale shadow of a more righteous accusation that can be hurled, one that better exposes the depth of their depravity.. With big lies and malice aforethought, those people stampeded the United States into war a mere 11 years ago. Why not set that historic crime as the bar best suited to illustrate the content of their collective characters? I always do.
Kropadope
@Dog On Porch: They didn’t do it alone…
Dog On Porch
@Kropadope: I concur (see above).
Betty Cracker
@Cassidy: Ah, the c-word! Nice! And thanks for demonstrating yet again that you’re a misogynist rage-monkey. But we knew that already.
For something completely new, maybe you could try backing up one of your idiotic assertions?
You frequently accuse “the front pagers” of covert Rand Paul support, as you just did in the comment that led me to note that you’re a moron.
Instead of responding with a misogynist smear, how about a link that supports your idiotic assertion?
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Maybe, but my sense is Obama talked up support for anti-Assad Syrians and then (wisely!) slow-walked any lethal support. Maybe that’s similar to what HRC is doing?
If we have the sense Obama hasn’t done anything to support anti-Assad Syrians, we may be falling prey to Beltway spin. As someone who opposes that category of aid, I know I’ve seen announcements of it. It just gets buried because it doesn’t support the narrative.
Cassidy
@Betty Cracker: Look, dummy, if I ever become interested in having a conversation with the bored housewife of crackerass Florida, I’ll let you know. Now run along and go back to worrying how to spend your husband’s money.
Kropadope
@ Betty Cracker and Cassidy
I went back to figure out how you two ended up where you are and, in the process, found this little gem.
I have to admit, this could almost make it worth it. Almost.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
Christ, this thread is full of stupidity.
amk
@Kay: The kenyan makes more sense than fantasizing hillz and he is spot on.
Betty Cracker
@Cassidy: In other words, you can’t back up the original idiotic assertion, so you’re doubling down on the sexism. How pathetic.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Yeah, tell me about it
::Braces self::
::Wry grin::
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
The reason I think it’s bigger than that (as an interview, or positioning, not necessarily as truth) is because she says it’s why some of what we’re seeing is happening. She’s using it say she was “vindicated” which is a strong opinion.
I wasn’t crazy about the interview. The stuff about “maybe I’m old fashioned” bothered me.
“Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I happen to think America is a force for good in the world!” :)
Whether she means it that way or not, people will hear it as a comparison.
She always had that weird defensiveness about “patriotic” that Democrats can’t seem to let go of. I was once at a county Dem Christmas Party when she was in the Senate and the speaker brought up her flag-burning law. It was wildly popular here at the time. The room applauded. I just wish they were confident enough not to feel they have to say and do these things.
I know she’ll differentiate herself and most of it is political positioning, but I do think she has to be careful because whether it’s earned or not the rap on her is she’s always carefully positioning. She isn’t going to be able to undo that reputation so she can’t play into it or accentuate it.
That’s how that sounds to me.
El Caganer
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Yes, but it’s really great stupidity (apologies to Firesign Theatre).
Betty Cracker
@Kropadope: Well, you are wrong. I can believe Cassidy is a moronic ass without being a particular fan of Hillary or Greenwald. Pretty sure I’m not alone in that club either.
El Caganer
@Kay: The “old fashioned” stuff is really off-key. At best, it’s parroting John McCain, at worst it sounds like just another dogwhistle.
Dog On Porch
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): And we’ll all miss you when you’re gone.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): And they managed it all without me. Amazing.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Never mind that nonsense.
How is the family holding up? Bereavement is no fun.
Cassidy
@Betty Cracker: shrug
My opinions don’t require validation or approval from you. Now, whatever domestic issue has got your panties curled and spoiling for a fight is not my problem, so don’t make it mine. Go buy some new shoes or a keurig or whatever it is you need to replace. Seriously, you’re like a pestering puppy.
Kay
@El Caganer:
Right, and that goes back to the idea that there’s this “other” group of Democrats who can step in and carry a national election. The Hillary Electorate. There isn’t. There’s just the one. That Obama versus Clinton race was a primary. There’s just The Democrats in a general.
She has to keep all of them. There’s no white males with trucks and gun racks riding to the rescue. That’s just James Carville and Chris Matthews fantasizing :)
amk
@Anne Laurie:
Now you’re pony wishing. Mebbe you should read the article.
Kropadope
@Betty Cracker: Oh, sorry if I was unclear. I didn’t mean to attribute this comment to your spat. I did, however, discover that comment chasing your spat-related links.
Cervantes
@Kay:
Nor was I.
For one thing, “Don’t do stupid stuff” can apply to how ideals are formulated as well as how they are put into practice. Pouncing on the language with her false dichotomy fully extended, and just to make such an empty point as she does, strikes me as foolish.
Suffern ACE
@El Caganer: I would find this believable if she would reflect upon why this hasn’t been the case. Right now, it looks like the US isn’t a source for good. It looks nosy at best. Maybe meddlesome. It is way too overextended to actually commit to anything and too tightfisted with soft aid to contribute its fair share there.
To give an example-South Sudan. It is an absolute disaster. Much of the population has fled. All of the groups that were fighting the old government are now fighting each other. It is Libya, but probably worse. Yet, it was a term project if three administrations to carve out space for Christians and animists.
Why does she think that failed? She was a big supporter of that.
mclaren
Barack Obama says his policy is “Don’t do stupid stuff.”
Then Obama:
[1] Gets American troops mired in Afghanistan, the country known as “the graveyard of empires,” with no end in sight;
[2] Continues America’s futile failed insanely self-destructive War on Drugs;
[3] Continues America’s futile failed insanely self-destructive War on Copyright Infringement;
[4] Continues America’s futile failed insanely self-destructive War on Terror (AKA “War on Brown People,” otherwise known as “Burning brown babies in the world’s poorest countries”);
[5] Continues America’s futile failed insanely self-destructive panopticon Orwellian surveillance of its own population;
[6] Continues and doubles down on his administration’s futile failed insanely self-destructive war on whistleblowers who reveal government crimes, while praising and rewarding the criminals.
Sounds like Obama’s actual policy is:
Do lots of stupid stuff, and persist in doing it even though an overwhelming majority of American protest that it’s stupid and pointless and self-destructive.
Kay
@Cervantes:
I don’t think the election will be about foreign policy.
You know, I get that women (supposedly!) have to be very clear ‘n tough on foreign policy because there’s some sense that they’re at a disadvantage there but in a way doesn’t that buy into the idea that there’s only one “real” presidential realm and that’s foreign policy? That whole frame seems to me conservative, as if everything else outside launching the missiles is “mommy party” or meddling in free markets or something.
if it’s a strength for Democrats and Clinton in particular (and it is- I heard her defend the health care law once in an interview and she was great) why not just be loud and proud about it rather than accept the conventional definition of what “real” presidential work is and try to fit into that?
You’d only push back against “mommy party” if you thought there was something wrong with “mommies”, right? I don’t, particularly.
Betty Cracker
@Cassidy: Thanks for supplying more evidence of your sexism, but it’s really coals to Newcastle at this point. However, there is one point you could still clarify: It appears that “my opinions don’t require your validation or approval” = “I was talkin’ out muh ass and can’t supply even one link to validate the assertion I made earlier.”
Is that about right? Or have you in fact found any evidence whatsoever that the “front pagers at Balloon Juice” are Rand Paul supporters? Surely there must be some linkable validation for your frequently expressed view that this is a stealth libertarian site? Or are you just completely full of shit?
negative 1
@the Conster: Sheldon’s not running. I know someone that works for him. He’s not running.
Betty Cracker
@Kropadope: Find the one where Cassidy taunts me about my recently dead mother or tries to shame Cole for causing the death of Tunch. Then you’ll have a sense of what kind of person you’re dealing with.
Emma
@rikyrah: Yes. I live in the middle of them. Not only Cubans but evangelical South Americans. Trust me on this one. A lot of them vote Republican.
mclaren
@Cassidy:
Rule of thumb: to avoid making yourself look like an idiot as well as a total asshole, make sure you know third-grade English grammar. Viz., the difference twixt “you’re” and “your.”
Betty Cracker and I may not agree on a lot of things, but she deserves a lot better than your ignorant pithecanthrepoid insults. Your kind of halfwit name-calling falls below even the low, low, low bar set by the Balloon-Juice commentariat.
Emma
@the Conster: Yes, but do they want to?
Cassidy
@Betty Cracker: Uh oh, looks like someone read a “big girl panties” meme on Facebook! My advice is to go deal with whatever it is your angry about with your husband or daughter. I’m not a surrogate and I don’t give a shit about you. Direct your moment of “I am woman hear me RAWR!!!” to someone who gives a single flying fuck if you wake up tomorrow. Have a good night.
Cassidy
@mclaren: Betty deserves nothing from me. Autocorrect is a problem at times; not something get hung up about.
Kropadope
@Betty Cracker: I was just trying to get in a double cheap shot and hope corner stone read it. As far as your argument, I don’t wanna take sides but I think it’s pretty clear one person is just being offensive and not trying to have a real discussion.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I can’t say you’re wrong because I had a similar take. I guess what shook me up was reading it when it was first published and then seeing the narrative — “HRC slams PBO’s foreign policy” — bloom. It’s the same old crap that divides Democrats. We shouldn’t fall for it. We should assess our choices and go from there, not buy into the Village soap opera.
Cassidy
@Betty Cracker: I just treated you how you advocated treating others. Sucks when people are callous to your traumatic experiences doesn’t it?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@negative 1: I’m a big fan of Whitehouse, Brown and Warren, but I don’t see any sign that any of them are running. I like O’Malley’s positions (from what I’ve seen), but unless he’s been having an off-night every time I’ve seen him speak publicly, he has the charisma a bowl of leftover oatmeal and he’s as clumsy with the media as a fourteen year old at his first dance. And yes, I know that shouldn’t matter. A lot of things that shouldn’t, do.
mclaren
@Kay:
Agreed. This 2016 presidential election is much more likely to be about domestic economic issues. The U.S. economy is not reviving in any meaningful way, and the economic stats just keep getting worse. A recent Pew survey of America’s most prestigious economists for the first time showed a 50-50 split between economists who thought that the rise of robots/automation/smart databases/data mining wouldn’t effect overall middle class employment (the classic “lump of labor fallacy”) and economists who predicted that the rise of the robots would spell the end of capitalism itself.
That’s a big change in the economics profession. Previously, all economists pooh-poohed the idea that the rise of the robots might lead very quickly (much faster than anyone expects, in fact) to a situation in which the 1% aren’t the super-rich, but the employed.
11 years from now isn’t that far off. And the fact that lots of serious economists, like Brad deLong (professor of economics at Berkeley) are starting to talk about the need for a guaranteed minimum income to avoid either mass impoverishment and homelessness, or an outright revolution of the bottom 80% of the U.S. population, suggests that this is becoming a real issue.
And this is where I have a real problem with HIllary Clinton. Her daughter is married to one of these asshole Masters of the Universe hedge fund managers at Goldman Sachs, Mark Mezvinsky. Hillary already gave a speech at Goldman Sachs in which she proclaimed “bashing the bankers is unproductive and needs to stop.”
Giving speeches defending the robbery of America’s super-rich robber barons (like Mark Mezvinsky, Hillary’s son-in-law) is not the solution to America’s economic problems.
I worry very seriously about what happens when HRC gets elected president and a second economic collapse hits and the senate plus house calls for a new Pecorah commission, and Hillary gets a phone call from her daughter wailing “They’re trying to put my hubby in jail, hellllllllllllllllllp meeeeeeeeeeeee…”
mclaren
@Cassidy:
Shut the fuck up and go the fuck away, asshole. Go back to beating your girlfriend with a baseball bat, you pathetic excuse for a human being.
Betty Cracker
@Cassidy: I’m not sure why you feel obligated to mention my family in a specific way in so many of your posts, but it’s creepy. Even creepier than your persistent sexism. You should stop it.
mclaren
@Betty Cracker:
As for the “HRC slams PBO’s foreign policy,” my take on that (for what it’s worth) is that it’s the usual lamestream media effort to create a horserace when there isn’t one.
At this point, the Republicans are so completely insane that everyone with a functioning nervous system understands HRC will be the next president if she runs. That’s fatal for the horserace-obsessed lamestream media. Where’ the excitement in that? How can CNBC get people to tune in for that kind of political coverage? No drama, no excitement, no suspense. So the media has to gin up some fake suspense when there really isn’t any.
Cervantes
@Kay:
The 2016 election is more than two years away. I have no opinion yet as to what it will be about.
Was she being clear, though? For example:
Granted, that’s not a quotation, but what does it mean? If the words are to be taken literally, she’s saying that America needs a leader whom the rest of the world thinks is delusional, a leader who knows less than nothing — or is unwilling to admit anything — about the last hundred-plus years of American foreign policy.
Well, there are various ways to push back against “mommy party” rhetoric. Denying that you are The Mommy Party is a particularly stupid way.
Cassidy
@mclaren: You should go practice giving head to a sharp stick.
@Betty Cracker: Just guessing. Whatever it is that’s got you in a moment, turn the Katy Perry down and go find something else to work your issues on. Maybe craigslist casual encounters is what you need.
mclaren
@Cervantes:
Yes, quite a lot of what Hills was saying was vague boilerplate designed to create the impression that she’s going to be “tough” and “assertive” without actually specifying any details.
In other words, the usual foreign policy tough-guy pubulum.
Betty Cracker
@Cassidy: Now you’re just babbling nonsensical pop culture shit you read on Buzzfeed. Which is sad. One more time: Can you back up any of the bullshit you’ve spewed right here in this thread about the front pagers here supporting Rand Paul? Or are you 100% full of shit? It’s not a hard question. How about you forget your creepy fixation with my family and answer that simple question?
Kropadope
@Betty Cracker: Perhaps what he or she means is that you all should support Rand Paul?
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: You are kind to ask. We’re doing okay. It’s a tough situation for all of us, probably most especially for the kids, but we are muddling through as best as we can because…no other choice? Mom and Grandpa would kick our ass if we did any less!
@mclaren: Not withstanding our longstanding and certainly continuing disagreement about everything, all the time, forever — thanks. :-)
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker: Had someone die of Alzheimer’s Disease recently. Writing and delivering a eulogy was difficult, but mostly because I was determined to keep it short, less than two minutes.
The essence of someone’s being: you try to capture it for all to remember and rejoice. A difficult exercise; an act of love for the dead and for the living.
Cheers.
Betty Cracker
@Kropadope: Well, maybe, but that would just underscore his qualification for the “moron” label since we all support higher taxes on the rich, a more robust social safety net and pretty much regularly express our contempt for the deference to “job creators.” You’d have to be a moron (i.e., someone as dumb as Cassidy) to label us Paulites.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker: Sometimes the title of the thread is so apt it’s eerie.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: Well, damn, I’m sorry. I haven’t lost anyone to that yet, but I do have friends who’ve dealt with it, and it seems like something more horrible than a sudden loss; it’s the living theft of who they are.
RE: the length of the eulogy — damn, two minutes? I limited myself to five and felt that was restrictive. But yeah, you can’t go on too long.
Kay
@mclaren:
I think it”s going to be about corruption and capture:
At least I hope so.
Right next to the Cantor piece is this:
Hmmm. Let’s go to Iraq and lecture them about the “credibility of national institutions”
Cervantes
@Kay: Great catch!
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
A couple of points.
For my sister I rambled on for what seemed about 10 minutes but I’d bet it was actually less than 3. But I hadn’t prepared anything because I couldn’t have remembered it anyway.
Can we get a ban on cassidy? I use the pie filter but still have to read other peoples responses to his crap. It is and has been a complete waste of time as he is such an asshole all the time. Many of us manage to slip into asshole in a great once in a while, I think it’s the nature of the medium and human beings. But some one who lives on the asshole side of the ledger and has no desire to ever move to the other side even for a moment? It’s a waste of all of our time.
Suffern ACE
@Kay: well, to be honest, at least many of our politicians don’t make huge fortunes until after they are out of office. I mean, McDonnell is facing prison over what amounts to $200k in bribes. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we managed to build new institutions where that level of bribery would be an improvement.
Jasmine Bleach
@Kropadope:
Yeah. Someone did a statistical analysis recently (was it here?) showing that based on statistical averages of lifespans once you reach a certain age, as of now whoever wins the 2020 presidential race will be the most likely person to decide the supreme court for the next couple of decades. Chances are that 3 supreme court justices will be decided in the 2021-2024 timeframe. As far as who wins 2016, there’s a pretty good chance it doesn’t matter much for deciding the long-term future of the supreme court.
We absolutely need a Dem elected president in 2020. Otherwise, this crap’ll never end . . .
askew
My quick take aways from this article and this thread:
1. Hillary is an awful politician who has learned nothing from her 2008 loss. Either she was too stupid to know that her answers to this interview were going to push the Hillary vs. Obama narrative or she stupidly thinks this narrative is going to help her campaign. Hint: It’s not. Obama is popular among Democrats that she’ll need to win over in the primary and get them to work for her in the general. Smearing the president is not the way to do that.
2. Hillary’s biggest negatives in 2008 was her hawkish foreign policy. She still hasn’t put her bad Iraq vote behind her and she is now talking about arming Syrians and getting entangled in other middle eastern messes.
3. Hillary has no loyalty. She still isn’t on the campaign trail helping to GOTV for 2014 and her publicly slamming Obama is going to hurt Dems in the midterm. Plus, Obama saved her from being a backbencher in the Senate by giving her the SoS job. Without it, she was going to be a has-been like Kerry was in 2006. And to reward him, she turns around and undermines Obama while he is dealing with the entire middle east in chaos.
4. There is room for someone to run to Hillary’s left on foreign policy and excite the base of the party. I still think O’Malley is going to make things difficult for Hillary in Iowa and NH. He has a strong resume to run on and he can talk about faith and progressive ideals in a way that Hillary just can’t.
5. For the love of God, Cassidy get off my side. The Hillarybots have been saying since 2007 that anyone who doesn’t support her is sexist. You calling Betty sexist names is not helping. And Betty is good people even though I disagree with her on most things. Leave her alone already.
Kay
@Suffern ACE:
No, it’s not the same, I agree.
I’m actually relieved the Cantor story merited an outraged op-ed. I was shocked that he was running around bragging about all the money he was going to make. Come on. They have to get a handle on this. Andrea Mitchell can’t be calmly nodding while Eric Cantor tells her how much money he is going to make lobbying after he leaves office. That’s not good enough. It’s too low a bar. We can’t all just accept this as normal.
I was reading the comments a coupla weeks ago about the VA Democrat who found it useful to hold up Medicaid so his daughter could be a judge. Jesus Christ. There were people writing “oh, his daughter? Well then! I can see how he would sell thousands of people out in that case!” I don’t think he should stay in ANY office and I also don’t think his daughter should be a judge if that’s how she’s getting the job.
We might want to look at the “credibility of our national institutions” too, if we’re setting out to advise Iraqis.
Porlock Junior
Peace, Progress, and Prosperity?!
WTF?
I suppose it could have come from a Miss World script. I know it did come from the 1956 Republican campaign script. Verbatim.
http://www.oldpoliticals.com/lot-7871.aspx
Suffern ACE
@Porlock Junior: the good news is that only 6% of the country is old enough to have voted in that election.
Cervantes
@Porlock Junior:
Two things.
Item the first, you may not recall this report issued by the outgoing Clinton Administration in January, 2001.
Item two, HRC was born into a Republican family during the Truman Administration. Politics was a frequent topic of discussion at home. By the time she was twelve or thirteen, she was herself an active Republican volunteer. Even apart from item one above, her reaching back to a Republican slogan from her childhood did not surprise me.
Mandalay
@Porlock Junior: Excellent find! You win the thread for that. Now let’s see how long it takes the Village to work it out. My guess is forever.
Chris
@Alex S.:
Yeah, I really have not been impressed with her as Secretary of State. She disagreed with Obama on the Bin Laden raid, and she disagreed with him on siding against Mubarak in the Egyptian revolution – both times incorrectly, IMO. When the president has a better grasp of foreign policy than his chief foreign policy adviser, it really doesn’t speak well for the adviser.
Chris
@James E. Powell:
My main question with Hillary Clinton’s deals with the devil (and I think lots of people’s) is whether she’s cutting the deals she has to, or whether she’s pandering reflexively either out of her own beliefs or because she thinks, not necessarily accurately, that it’s what people want to hear.
Why, for example, do we keep hearing about her appeal to “Reagan Democrats” (e.g. white voters with SoCon tendencies and/or racial anxieties)? It’s not the twentieth century anymore. Democrats in the old days needed to peel off as many of them as possible, but Obama showed that you don’t need them to win anymore – his coalition was heavy on young people, nonwhite people and women, not on winning back people who thought Nixon and Reagan sounded great. So why advertise yourself as tied to a conservative bloc like that, when you increasingly don’t have to anymore?
The national security state. Yes, in some ways Democrats who fail to “pledge fealty” to it are screwed – but not all around the bloc. Why the disagreements with Obama on arming the Syrian rebels, or pulling out of Afghanistan ASAP? Clearly, Obama espoused the non-hawkish position on these issues and he’s still around – the security state didn’t sink him, the public didn’t crucify him for it (because the public doesn’t want these wars: it’s not the Bush years anymore). So again, why the hawkish position? It’s not winning her any points outside of the cesspool of Washington pundits.
Chris
@Mandalay:
Speaking of nothing but the 2016 elections for the moment, my concern personally about that (and I think a lot of people’s) is that she’s heading for a repeat of Al Gore in 2000 – distancing herself from her predecessor in the mistaken belief that the American people feel the same way about him as the DC punditariat. It’s an insane mistake for a Clinton of all people to make, after it was done to her husband.
Of course, the media is going to do everything it can to emphasize the gulf between her and Obama – as you pointed out, so how much of that is really her and how much is artificial, I can’t say. But like I said… it’s a concern. I really hope it turns out to be unfounded once she actually gets campaigning.
Chris
@goblue72:
If I wasn’t at the office, I would’ve stood and cheered at all of this, but especially that quote.
Which doesn’t mean the White House ISN’T important, as every new Supreme Court decision reminds us. But yeah, we really do need to think more about the rest.
Chris
@Hunter Gathers:
I’m not as hard on the Clintons as some, because it seems like all the trends that started with Nixon crested in the nineties, with the Southern Strategy playing itself out in 1994 and the Silent Majority still being very much a majority – minority demographics weren’t what they are now, gay rights were still an issue that hurt rather than helped liberals, etc. And expecting Clinton to govern as a real liberal in that kind of environment seems as unrealistic to me as expecting Eisenhower to govern as a John Bircher at the height of the “liberal consensus” years.
However, the point is that the country’s changed since then, and it pisses me off now that they don’t seem to be changing with it.
Chris
@sdhays:
And, again… this is incredibly sad to see coming from the wife of a man who, when he was elected, was hated and ridiculed by Official Washington as a hillbilly with ideas above his station, who “came in and trashed the place, and it wasn’t his place.”
Cassidy
@Betty Cracker: Sorry. went to bed. Stupid ass bored housewives with nothing better to do than drink a couple glasses of wine and pretend they’re a feminist is not worth staying up for. Now listen closely. I have zero interest in talking to you. You’re a non-person to me. You could die, right now, and I’d feel nothing. Well, maybe a smirk or two, but you get it. So please, go back to your little, insulated suburban worries and opinions. Write another post about how frustrating things can happen on your 2nd vacation and get everyone here to boo hoo for you. Drink some more wine. Read Cosmo. Do whatever it is you do during your comfortable day that’s been bought and paid for since you were a little tyke. Piss off you stupid cunt.
Now, I’m gonna get dressed and go home. I’ve got school orientations. Then I’m gonna call my mother. Have a nice day.
Cervantes
@Chris:
I agree re the two examples you give above. He was right, both times.
But in general, Presidents sometimes choose a Secretary of State more to carry out their policies than to give them advice. (Not saying that is what Obama did.)
Betty Cracker
@Cassidy: Keep squirting, little squid. Your inky jets of misogyny and malice don’t conceal your inability to back up your moronic assertion up-thread, but they reveal a lot about you. Please proceed, asshole.
Dave
Hillary’s “organizing principle” is neoconservatism. You can see that in her comments regarding Syria, Iran, and Israel. Imagine if Hillary had won in 2008. We’d be bogged down in Syria, still have troops in Iraq, and possibly would have started a war with Iran. Here’s hoping for a challenger to Hillary who has been paying attention to foreign affairs in the 21st Century. Even if he/she is unlikely to win, I’d like someone to pose a threat from the left on foreign affairs to make clear that a return to Bush-era foreign policy is not something Democrats will ever support.
LAC
@amk: this!!!!
Kerry Reid
@Cassidy: The combination of the grammatically incorrect form of “your” and “brainless” is just priceless.
Shortstop
@Chris: This sums it up nicely, I think.
Shortstop
@Kerry Reid: He does it every time. He’ll never understand why everyone’s laughing.
Kerry Reid
@Chris: I did stand up and cheer (sort of), but I work from home. Honestly, I get so fricking tired of Dems who yammer on about how they need to be “inspired” in order to vote for someone. Every election at this point for me is a referendum between a Dem (uninspiring as he or she may be) or a representative of an insane nihilist death cult. Frankly, that inspires the shit out of me on Election Day.
Cassidy
@Betty Cracker: You’re the one who keeps coming back. I was perfectly content ignoring you. Again, I’m not sure why some bored, suburban housewife thinks she’s entitled to any kind of explanation from me, but then, you’re a bored suburban housewife with nothing better to do than pretend you’re a writer in the internet.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: A couple of points: 1) BC is a writer on the internet; that’s what being a front pager on a blog is. 2) You made an assertion that the front pagers were going to be supporting Rand Paul in 2016. BC asked you to back up that assertion. This is common practice on blogs. You could have offered links that show why you believe that. He’ll, you could have said that it was simply your impression of where the front pagers were trending. Instead, you went straight to misogynistic insults; it says something unflattering about both you and the quality of your assertion.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: Yawn
No, the stupid c#nt got some wine in her and wanted to pick a fight. I am under no obligation to treat her with any measure of respect or dignity. The dumb bitch can go face fuck a piece of rebar and I would not care. I am under no obligation to explain to anyone, especially some stupid c#nt of a bored suburban housewife, why I think something to be true. The fact that the stupid split tail kept going back to that as if she had some sort of moral victory for DEMANDING SOMETHING ON THE INTERNET!!!! is laughable and pathetic. So, unless you think your bullet points are going to alter reality, why don’t you take a hike. If the dumb c#nt doesn’t want to be made fun of, she’ll move along and we can go back to ignoring one another.
Cassidy
Gonna be honest, that felt good getting that off my chest. Today is gonna be a great day.
LAC
@Kerry Reid: Kerry, me too. When you think of the bat shit lunatic or Romney clone that could sit in the White House and bring more legal grifters to the Supreme Court, I get real inspired.
Xecky Gilchrist
Love that “(unpopular)” there. Is this from the same press that called Bush an extremely popular wartime president when his approval was cratering?
The Pale Scot
@James E. Powell:
The issue is that the rhetoric is mainlined from AIPAC
Betty Cracker
@Cassidy: I certainly never expected you to explain shit, you sub-literate fart-huffer; the statement you made was bullshit, so of course you can’t back it up. I was just calling you out as a liar and giving you the opportunity once again to demonstrate that you’re a malicious, misogynistic douchebag. Mission accomplished!
Betty Cracker
@The Pale Scot: Sometimes it seems like all US foreign policy is.
Cassidy
@Betty Cracker: I didn’t lie about anything. I have belief. I don’t owe your stupid ass an explanation for anything. Now run along back to playing kept. Btw, I just talked to my Mom. It was nice. I just love being able to talk to her anytime I want. Go have another glass of wine bored housewife and compensate for that big ol’ hole you’ve got.
Cassidy
Eh, I’m bored with you now. You keep clinging to your, well, whatever it is you call it. That and a handjob will get you a sticky hand.
shortstop
@Cassidy: Serious question, put without sarcasm or rancor: Have you had a neurological workup since returning from the ME?
Tyren M
@goblue72: @goblue72:
…That being said, given gender dynamics in national U.S. elections at this point, it does make a lot of sense to run a white woman at the head of the ticket. But we do need to figure out how to get white people to vote for Democrats in greater numbers.
White women voted for Romney. D’s won over 1 million more votes than R’s nationwide in 2012. I don’t have the answer to get the House back by 2020, but we won WH and Senate without pandering to the Bubba crowd.
Kerry Reid
@LAC: David Sedaris had a piece in the New Yorker before the 2008 general about the “undecided” voter that pretty much nailed it. He said that being undecided that year was like being on a plane, the flight attendant offers you a choice in dinner options between chicken and shit with pieces of glass in it, and then asking “Well, I just don’t know — how is that chicken prepared?”
Cassidy
@shortstop: yes
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
It’s not the subject matter that’s the problem. It was never the subject matter.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Cervantes: Of course not. That particular poster has decided that this blog is full of “suburban, coffeehouse liberals” (perhaps his term for what others call champagne socialists, etc.) and clearly is willing to go to quite extensive and misogynistic depths in order to express his disdain.
Shortstop
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Looking at this thread, and remembering some others, I’d say his issue goes way past a poor grasp of policy/political process combined with gargantuan douchebaggery. Cassidy doesn’t seem to want to answer my query about neurological explorations, but it’s pretty clear the dude is very, very ill and desperately needs treatment.
That’s not making any kind of excuse for the douchebaggery, of course — just pointing out that it’s pretty clearly stemming from mental illness.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Shortstop: You may well be right. That kind of thing is far, far beyond my area of expertise.
ETA: It definitely seems beyond “I was having a bad day and got pissy with someone.”
Porlock Junior
@Cervantes:
Good one.
No, I didn’t recall that. Too recent for my memory. Even though I wasn’t old enough to *vote* in ’56.
Cervantes
@Shortstop:
À propos of nothing, here is by far the wisest thing in all his days that Richard Nixon ever thought to say:
(August 9, 1974)
gian
@Cassidy:
then you might want to stop posting to her, that is if you don’t want to converse. just a thought, since you seem to be running low on them
Betty Cracker
@Shortstop: Or maybe he’s just a garden-variety asshole. If every wee armchair bully who waves his pee-pee around online is a clinical case, entire subreddits are open air psych wards.
shortstop
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think every one, or even very many of them, are clinical cases. But I think this one is. As I said, I’m not diminishing or in any way excusing the asshole portion of the equation.
shortstop
Sure you have, “Marvin.” Thanks for weighing in!
kc
Didn’t see the whole thing, unfortunately, but I saw part of it. That kid is a good witness.