I was talking to a friend of mine about Gore’s choice of Joe Lieberman in 2000. I told him that I thought the base would rebel if something like that happened now. He disagreed, he said most Democratic voters like the idea of bipartisan centrist moderates, that your typical NPR listener (he’s unaware of my anti-totebag jiahd, btw) desperately wants to think that there’s reasonable people on both sides, that the truth always lies in the middle.
He’s probably right, I’m probably wrong.
While it’s a bit sad how much Republicans want to rally around any candidate who promises to stick it to the hippies, it’s equally sad how little Democrats want to punch Galtians.
Do you think this will ever change, that Democrats will ever embrace the idea of wanting to fuck the other side first, reasonable objective thoughtful compromise later? I sure as hell hope so.
JPL
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahaha We are a big tent and if we did that the news media would be all over us.. Remember the recount in FL and especially remember the soldiers overseas. Don’t you remember they were all home when Obama was elected. Silly, boy….
KG
No, they won’t. Because effective government requires working with the other side. Republicans aren’t interested in effective government anymore (i know there arent many fans around here, but Reagan and Bush Sr cared to some extent, you may not have agreed with their positions, but thy at least tried to govern). They are interested in winning elections and nothing that comes after it. Democrats know that they either need FDR-esque majorities or they need to get a decent chunk of the mushy middle to go along
Ted & Hellen
Thank you, DougJ, for repeating what I’ve been saying here for six years or so.
I trust the response to YOUR saying it will differ in tone from my experience however…
Belafon
Can you have two at war parties without actually being in a civil war?
angler
It’s a shame Joey wasn’t McCain’s running mate. He could have lost election to that office for both parties.
angler
It’s a shame Joey wasn’t McCain’s running mate. He could have lost election to that office for both parties.
Ted & Hellen
@KG:
Horse shit. See, you are part of the problem.
The reality is that effective government sometimes, almost ALL the time these days when the opposition is insane, requires kicking ass, killing, maiming, and ruthlessly obliterating the enemy.
Your namby pamby fantasy about government has been dead since Reagan took office.
askew
No it won’t change because Democrats believe in functioning government and you need people who can compromise and deal with reality in office to have a successful government. Loons like Kucinich may be “pure” but they don’t accomplish anything. The failure of MSNBC to understand the Democratic base is one of the reasons their ratings are tanking. They are playing to the Kucinich’s of the party, the perpetually outraged who rail at everything and accomplish nothing. The rest of the party has no patience for their nonsense.
Tonight, Maddow and Hayes are already blaming Obama for bombing Syria. They were the same ones who were sure that we were going to have Iraq 2 with Libya and never apologized for being dead wrong.
Poopyman
No. Of course not. People develop (more or less) intellectually and emotionally, then find like minded groups (and political philosophies) that match their needs/wants. The philosophies of the political parties are mostly set, and people are attracted or repelled depending on their already-set personal philosophies.
Rich Gardner
Never had much use for centrists myself. To me, it’s always been the dirty fucking hippies who are always right, the useless centrists who just use up valuable time and space and the evil right-wingers.
But no, even my revenge fantasies are pretty non-violent. I’d like to discredit the right wing so that people know them for the assholes they are. Violence just makes them martyrs and they love being martyrs.
Villago Delenda Est
For the record, I do not want to punch Galtians.
I want to beat them to the curb and leave them for dead.
Poopyman
@Ted & Hellen:
Well, no, the fantasy lives on. But it hasn’t ever matched the political reality.
cokane
hmmm the thing you’re missing is that a lot less of Joe Lieberman types exist. I’m not saying the U.S. has swung completely anti-interventionist. However, full-scale Iraq-type intervention, yes, the electorate has swung against that in a big way. I realize that’s just part of Lieberman’s centrism.
craigie
I don’t know about Democrats as a whole, but I’m ready!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Joe Lieberman 2000 is a very different animal from Joe Lieberman after 2001, and after 2004.
To the larger question, even leaving aside the current madness, Republicans are the anti-government party. Fucking the other side suits their ideology as well as (often) their personality. Democrats want to get things done, to help people, so often, as with health care, getting something imperfect that helps a lot of people is better than nothing.
How public are you with your bloggy persona, and do you think your friend is one of those who thinks “I’m a fiscal conservative and a social liberal” is the Shibboleth of the Reasonable.
Roy G.
Somehow that’s not the question I have in mind today, after watching John Kerry do his Tony Blair impersonation. He would’ve happily been Dubya’s SecState in a faux ‘team of rivals’ scenario.
Suzanne
@Poopyman: This.
Also, I’d argue that being a liberal/progressive/Democrat is intellectually *harder* than being a conservative. It takes more knowledge of history, economics, philosophy, science, culture, and ethics, and probably personal introspection, to align oneself with the ideology that is NOT “IGMFY”. As such, I don’t anticipate ever having a large enough left-wing bloc that coalition won’t be necessary.
Yes, I know that sounds elitist. Do. Not. Care.
Doug Milhous J
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
My friend’s radical, moreso than I am.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not sure that I agree because he was a terrible campaigner and was the first to cave on Florida. He was different from a few a few years before that though.
also, too.. then he became a bitter old man…
Jeremy
@askew: Exactly. In a country with a two party system the country thrived when both parties were balanced with liberal, moderate, and conservative elements which created coalitions and functioning government (example: Rockefeller republicans and liberal democrats leading the way on Civil Rights and other historical initiatives).
All you have to do is look at the current Republican party where ideological purity has hurt the country and the future of their party. Having a rigid ideological party leads to destruction.
SatanicPanic
@KG: This + the fact that effective government means rule of law, something Republicans and morons like T & H don’t believe in. We already know what a left that just wants to stick it to the other side looks like and I for one will pass on going the Pol Pot route.
Jewish Steel
Stolen from cleek: Here is the first mention of the word “congress.”
Elect a House and Senate full of galtpunchers and bob’s your uncle!
Poopyman
@Suzanne:
Only because the word “elitist” has been co-opted. Once upon a time those attributes were called “good citizenship.”
LeftCoastTom
I don’t think so.
Gore/Lieberman were running against a pair of fucking morons, and their win was so close that the irredeemable hack Scalia was able to overturn it. Personally, I think the Lieberman pick was a part of that clusterfuck. Even then.
(And yes, I do also blame Nader voters…Gore/Lieberman shouldn’t have allowed their race against the morons to be so close, Nader voters shouldn’t have decided the morons were a perfectly crumulent option.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Doug Milhous J: ah, I misread your OP as saying he was a typical NPR listener
There’s also how “center” gets defined. Last week I was looking at HuffPo, which I use as a place to look at headlines, in between articles about how Obama’s the greatest right wing tyrant since Hitler and more incompetent than Bush and some side-boob link-baits, was a link to an article about the struggles of Republican moderates featuring a picture of… Paul Ryan.
@JPL: He already had his eye on 2004 the day after the ’00 election. I forget which Lieberman watcher said that even more than the Iraq War, his loss in 2004 made him bitter and drove him further right.
Jeremy
I also believe that you can improve the party by getting involved on the grassroots level and pushing the party in certain direction. But I don’t believe ideological purity will ever happen because not everyone will agree on everything.
longtime lurk
If Hillary chooses a Lieberman type for VP in 3 yrs (not unlikely, IMHO), I guarantee you that 95% of the commenters on here are going to be yelling “SHUT UP YOU HIPPIE FIREBAGGERS! Do you want the Republicans in control??” to anyone who comes here and politely points out that, say, Evan Bayh or Cory Booker or whoever is a corporatist tool of Wall Street and the Defense industry, etc.
seabe
Can’t say if it will ever happen, but I sure as fuck hope so. We’ve never really accomplished anything for the welfare state or civil rights except for holding solid far-ranging majorities.
Right now it’s war. The Republicans and conservatives in general need to be kicked, thrashed, and tossed in a flaming dumpster. That requires brute force.
Luckily we’re moving closer, but as this thread shows, we’re nowhere near that level of thought. Maybe people of my generation won’t show as much mercy (me being 25 years old).
askew
@Suzanne:
Watching the far left since Obama’s win in 2008 I can’t agree with that statement at all. They’ve held up an endless list of white charlatans with questionnable ethics as true progressive heroes just because they disagreed with Obama. They’ve celebrated Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, etc. They’d tried just as hard as the extreme right to kill the healthcare bill and the Frank-Dodd bill. They declared they would sit out the 2010 election and then blamed Obama for losing the House. They spread conspiracy theories that Obama was never going to end the Iraq War and the Libyan War would be Iraq II. They’ve accused Obama of colluding with Wall Street to defraud mainstreet. All of this nonsense was backed up by zero facts and no understanding of politics or history. The extreme left and the extreme right are mirror images of one another. Both belief bizarre conspiracy theories that are fueled by their persecution complexes and both are frequently duped by people trying to swindle them out of money (see Glenn Beck and Jane Hamsher). Buncha nutters on both sides.
KG
To go further, I think the question about whether the base would revolt would depend on circumstances, particularly who the choice would be… Baucus? Maybe. Reid? Probably.
But it still amazes me how close 2000 was overall. I mean, New Hampshire was very close, Tennessee and Arkansas were both winnable for Gore, Oregon was as close as New Mexico for Gore, and Nevada was also close for Bush.
Amir Khalid
It might be fun for your side to think about punching out the Galtians (okay, it would definitely be fun) but isn’t it ultimately a distraction? For the likes of the Koch brothers, the real prize is getting their political agenda implemented. Hippie punching lures in the rubes, and fire them up to participate in their own screwing-over.
Your side isn’t looking to pull in any rubes. It’s trying to appeal to the common good. Demonising the Galtians might not be a good fit with that objective. Besides, there are things the good guys don’t do, and reasons why they don’t do them. That’s what makes them not the bad guys.
Jeremy
@LeftCoastTom: Gore made a number of mistakes in that race and picking Lieberman was the biggest.
Tripod
The “base” as NPR listeners and progressive blog posters.
Are you fucking high?
Comrade Jake
@Ted & Hellen: LOL, yeah, that’s what you’ve been trying to say all this time. OK.
lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
No DEMOCRATS SUCK AT MESSAGING, AND OBAMA IS WEAK AND INEFECTUAL..OR A REPUBLICAN, OR SOMETHING.
ARGLEBARGLE.
(even though Obama has shepherded some of the most progressive language into law in our lifetimes)
But ARGLEBARGLE…DEMOCRATS SUCK (or whatever)
aimai
@LeftCoastTom: I really, really, hate this meme that they “let” the race get close. The country was tired of the Clintons and Bush had a fuckton of money. The other party gets voted in some times–especially after a successful but controversial two term run by one party. Its true that, in the end, the race came down to being borked and torqued in Florida but that wasn’t Gore’s fault–for once it really was a case of “who could have predicted?” There is something childish, something compositional fallacy-like, about insisting that something something something that Gore could have done would have made the race less close and therefore unstealable. Do we really have to believe that all that is evil and wrong in this world happens to us because of something we did wrong? Sometimes bad shit happens to the entire oountry and it doesn’t come down to a single set of decisions or Gore’s actions.
jamick6000
I agree with everything you say here Doug.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people involved in Democratic politics think it’s always and forever 1985. They always think they’re gonna lose and the only way to avoid getting killed is to basically accept the conservative framing of issues, and just push around the edges (a little more abortion and money for NPR, less racism). Ther’re motivated by fear.
I think some of this is a generational thing. Most of the people I’m talking about are older. Their formative political experiences were losing and failing to meet a variety of challenges. Hopefully this generation that’s more liberal *and* more used to winning won’t be as fearful of failure, so they won’t take as much shit from the party.
Spaghetti Lee
I told him that I thought the base would rebel if something like that happened now.
I get a feeling we’ll find out if Clinton wins the nomination in ’16.
jamick6000
@Amir Khalid:
this is very very naive.
Jeremy
@longtime lurk: I doubt she will pick those people you named. I think she will pick someone like a Martin O’Malley because she like many Democrats realize that they have the electoral advantage and demographics on their side so they don’t need the Lieberman’s of the world anymore.
scav
Considering the demonstrated social skills, success and charm of its most ardent local advocate . . . we’re probably lucky that it probably won’t entirely take. A little more brimstone would be handy, but the knee-jerk radical thought-lite instant-anti ragegasm is more characteristic of those with the ability to ignore complicated facts and context, aka sublunar reality.
Comrade Jake
Holy Joe was picked because he was very critical of Clinton’s judicious use of cigars, and Gore was trying to distance himself from the embarrassment in the WH.
But Gore made plenty of mistakes during the campaign, like inventing the Internet.
askew
@Jeremy:
Yep. Eventually, we are going to end up 73% of the country in the Democratic Party or independent because the conservative loons drove everyone else out of the Republican Party.
Jane2
@Ted & Hellen: In which country is a federal government like that working?
LeftCoastTom
@aimai: If Gore/Lieberman were running against minimally-competent opponents, I’d be happy to agree with ‘bad shit just happens’. But they weren’t, Bush the Younger was basically Dan Quayle with a different family name.
Edit: and with respect to the Shrubbies money, that didn’t do anything for Meg Whitman in her CA-GOV race. I think campaign money is necessary in so far as it gets the candidate’s message out, but I’m not buying it’s value much beyond that.
EconWatcher
We’ve had some pushback, but not ooen rebellion, at the notion of Larry Summers as new Fed chair. This tells me we have a long way to go.
schrodinger's cat
Picking Joe Lieberman to be your pick for VP is like making an own goal.
Spaghetti Lee
@Amir Khalid:
Your side isn’t looking to pull in any rubes. It’s trying to appeal to the common good. Demonising the Galtians might not be a good fit with that objective.
I’d respond by saying that the Galtians are an obstacle to the common good. I’m all for peace and brotherhood and loving your fellow man, but if the other man is trying to actively trying to destroy you and everything you hold dear (and no, I don’t think this is an exaggeration) and you just let him do it because good guys don’t fight back, you’re a sucker.
Haydnseek
I find it quite interesting that atheists are the most willing to turn the other cheek. The irony only lasts so long…….I keep my powder dry, and my eye sharp. Because god is love, as are all of his zombies.
askew
@Jeremy:
VP Martin O’Malley would be about the only thing that would make another Clinton presidency palatable to me. But, I doubt she picks someone with more charisma and who has a better resume than she does as VP. She’s already going to get overshadowed by her husband. She’ll want someone with less star wattage for the bottom of the ticket. Maybe Evan Bayh?
Jane2
@longtime lurk: In my opinion, Hillary is a centrist, slightly left of center.
MikeJ
@Tripod:
It’s as if they had never heard of a black church.
Jeremy
@jamick6000: I think that changed when Obama picked Biden in 2008 and won by a landslide. That was the first time a Southern was not placed on the ticket for political gain. After 2012 I think many Democrats have embraced the idea that the republicans don’t have the advantage that they had after 1968.
NobodySpecial
@askew:
…except, of course, where you reasonable centrists were proclaiming that others were reading too much into Obama with their uncritical support until he proved insufficiently liberal.
As has been pointed out again and again and again, liberal turnout was the same in 2010 that it was in 2006. The people who stayed home were the ‘moderates’ who thought they’d done their job by electing Obama. Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
And, of course, there is no difference between a Bush and a Gore. You can certainly tell who used to vote R on this blog by the Ratchet Effect.
jamick6000
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
NAFTA, welfare reform, TARP,
american politics isn’t a star wars movie.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Too old for the Veep slot. Evan Bayh was short-listed by Kerry and maybe Gore, and he at least seemed to think he was a shoe-in for HRC’s number two; I doubt he’d be brought back in. Cory Booker gives me a huge Lieber-vibe. I like Amy Klobuchar but I’ve seen a lot of venom directed her way. I’m trying to think of younger Dem governors but I’m drawing a blank. Cuomo’s a Wall Streeter, isn’t he? I get the impression there’s not a lot of love between him and the Clintons
KG
@aimai: as I said above, Florida got a lot of attention, but there were other states they could and should have won. Nevada, New Hampshire, Arkansas, Tennessee. Clinton/Gore won all of those in 1996, a win in any of those in 2000 would have made Florida a footnote
MikeJ
@Comrade Jake:
Vint Cerf, the guy who *did* invent the internet, said what Gore said was absolutely correct. Republicans are going to lie about every single thing a Democrat says. The only way to avoid it is to say nothing at all.
catclub
For those who say that centrism is required, note that Obama’s running mate is likely more liberal than he is.
(And everyone knows the GOP called Obama the most liberal senator evar!, so it must be true.)
How about Biden/Warren in 2016? Of course, that would be an incredibly old ticket.
Jewish Steel
For VP: Every Hispanic Democrat above the alderman level looks in the mirror every night and thinks, “Why not?” I know I would.
Citizen Alan
@LeftCoastTom:
I have always held to the belief that Gore’s biggest mistake was in thinking that the impeachment of Clinton was something that Democrats should have been ashamed of instead of something that to be outraged over. Instead of picking that backstabbing sniveling ferret as a running mate, he should have picked someone who was outspoken in opposition to impeachment and run on a platform of “hey, America! The America-hating Republicans just tried to overthrow a sitting president because they couldn’t beat him in an election! What do you all think about that?”
longtime lurk
@Jane2:
Yes, I’ll give you “slightly left of center”, but only if you exclude foreign policy, counterterrorism, and the like. I believe she would fit nicely in the middle of House Republicans on those issues.
Mandalay
@aimai:
Well he could and should have won his home state of Tennessee.
Had he done that all the wailing about Nader and Florida would have been irrelevant. Gore ran a pretty piss poor campaign.
danielx
SATSQ: No, not for a while and not until things suck even worse for the middle class than they do now. Yes, it’s distinctly possible and maybe even probable.
Untill such time as casting votes against Wall Street/corporate/national security interests gains them more in public appeal than it costs them in campaign contributions, they won’t do that. Those votes would require going tooth and nail with the Rs, which most Dems don’t have the stomach for. Until that time, they will go on voting against what polls tell them the public favors, and by large margins.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Spaghetti Lee
I think that a reason far-right Republicans are able to focus so fanatically on destroying the opposition is because they’re kind of deranged. I mean, that sounds like a cheap shot, but read the comments on right-wing blogs and the things the bloggers themselves say. These are not healthy people. The desire-hell, the ability-to spend every waking moment nursing your hatred of people you disagree with is not a task for stable and rational people. And I think the reason there aren’t so many foaming at the mouth liberals is because the liberal temperament, if you will, doesn’t really allow it. Saying that you want logic and reason and progress and equality to rule the day on one hand and saying you want your enemies’ heads on a pike on the other is going to cause a lot of cognitive dissonance for a lot of people.
Amir Khalid
@Spaghetti Lee:
I’m not saying don’t fight back. I’m saying like-for-like might not be the most effective strategy for doing that.
Jeremy
@askew: Yeah but she is going to want to appease the liberal side of the party. I doubt she would pick Evan Bayh.
Keith G
Nah.
The Democratic side is still a collection of coalitions (that’s right…several different coalitions). Overt, fire-breathing hostility might actually be effective, but it might also chase away some members of the extended Democratic family – or at least cause them to check out for a bit, unless a charismatic leader could keep most of our factions sort of on the same page.
That is why I have been bit frustrated with Obama. He seemingly had the chops to turn up the heat on GOP fecklessness. A clearly charismatic leader would stand a good chance of keeping divergent Democrats, the semi Democrats and many independents focused on the calculated treachery of the other side.
Joel
The democratic base is a lot younger and less white than it was in 2000. Some people might welcome Lieberlike but most would not. Obama helped change the calculus.
Yatsuno
Sigh. I can remember the big discussion about Lieberman was the fact that he was the first Jewish vice-presidential nominee and no one cared that he looked and sounded like Droopy Dog. That was before everyone lost their shit after 9/11 though too.
Culture of Truth
Well, look at the future stars. Most are centrist or reasonable, or non-fighters. Clinton is a fighter but a centrist. Deval Patrick is not a fire-breather. Warren is not a centrist and is kind of a fighter.
askew
@NobodySpecial:
The only Republican I’ve ever voted for in my life was Scott Klug in 1992 and only because his Democratic opponent Ada Deer was a complete nutter. Hell, I even wore the orange cap and campaigned for Dean in Iowa. I still think there is no difference between the extreme left and the extreme right though. Both sides are delusional about their importance and don’t have a grasp on reality.
Booker has more charisma than Hillary. He won’t get near the VP slot. And though many white liberals smear him, he has been loyal to the Democratic Party and has never behaved liked Lieberman. Yes, he made one dumb comment on MTP in 2012. That doesn’t make him anything like Lieberman. The man has spent years working on poverty and urban issues. He is strong on civil rights, women’s rights and income equality. All of that puts him far to the left of Lieberman especially the women’s rights.
Hillary is claiming to be from New York now so Cuomo is out unless she picks another state to be a resident of and they don’t like each other.
I think it is Bayh or Mark Warner. Both bland and boring white guys who will do whatever the Clintons tell them to do and never overshadow them in any way.
danielx
@Spaghetti Lee:
Laughing….”kind of” deranged? Who knew?
You noticed this when, again?
Citizen Alan
@aimai:
If Bill Clinton had been eligible to run for a third term, he’d have won handily.
Jeremy
@jamick6000: TARP was necessary in order to save the economy from going into a full blown depression. I really can’t see how you could compare NAFTA, and Welfare reform to something many didn’t want to do but had to. Also the government made money off of TARP so it wasn’t like the government didn’t get the funds back.
mclaren
Take a look at the Balloon Juice commentariat, Doug. It’s one of the bigger political blogs out there, with somewhere over a million pageviews per days, so it’s reasonably representative of the broad median in the Democratic liberal bell curve. “Democrats [who] embrace the idea of wanting to fuck the other side first, reasonable objective thoughtful compromise later” — that would be me, Doug. And how does the Balloon Juice commentariat (by and large) respond to me?
I’m called a “firebagger.” I’m called “in need of therapy.” I’m called “ignorant” and “stupid.” I’m called “delusional.” I’m called “off his meds.”
Suggesting broad blunt actions Obama could take to do end-runs around the procedural blocks set up by the Republicans is described as “insane.” Let me be specific: I’ve suggested the following end-runs for Obama, all minor variations on the kinds of actions Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower and George W. Bush and Bill Clinton took to get around opposition blocks against their policies:
[1] Obama could completely bypass all senatorial blocks on his federal appointees by making recess appointments. Yes, I’m perfectly aware that recess appointments only last a year. So what? Obama would get his agencies and cabinet positions staffed. Why the hell doesn’t he do this?
[2] Obama could completely end-run all blocks on federal agency heads who must be confirmed by putting in place innocuous puppets as nominal heads of those agencies and redrawing the organizational charts to re-route real control to someone else Obama would appoint. The congress would fume and fulminate, but in the end they couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
[3] Obama could do basic things like shut down the NSA spying with a simple executive order. Or he could simply draft an executive order mandating that all listening could not be stored or listened to but must be destroyed immediately. Once again, congress would fume, but what could they do?
[4] Obama could close Gitmo tomorrow and transfer the kidnap victims imprisoned there back to neutral or home countries by sequestering funds from other military operations and transferring the funds to the Gitmo closure. Ronald Reagan did this all the time. You’re telling me Obama can’t do it?
[5] Obama could bypass the debt ceiling ‘crisis’ by citing the constitutional requirement that all federal debts must be paid (it’s not an option, the constitution doesn’t say “if the president feels like it” or “when it happens to convenient,” the constitution says it must be done and then simply issuing an executive order. Once again congress would scream, but so what? Congress screamed when Harry Truman called out U.S. army troops to end a U.S. steel strike in the late 1940s, and tough tit. In the end, congress got over it. Instead, Obama cringes and grovels and whimpers. It’s unsustainable. Sooner or later this debt ceiling crisis will blow up and the U.S. will go into default, and it’ll be a financial mess for everyone. Obama could avoid all that merely by issuing an executive order.
These are specific examples. They’re not exotic. Other mainstream press op-ed writers like Krugman and Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein have suggested these kinds of options for Obama. And yet the entire BJ commentariat is such a whimpering crawling craven group of bully-worshiping lickspittles that they wail in horror of Obama ever actually bending the interpretation of the rules slightly, ever going slightly into gray areas like sequestering funds or issuing signing statements.
The mindset of Democrat centrist liberals seems to be: “Republicans can bend the rules all they want and we musn’t object because we’re so upstanding and so noble that we’re above that kind of vile partisan politics — but if anyone suggests that a Democratic president or legislator bend the rules, why, then we must shriek and fall on our fainting couch, because we are such pure perfect bipartisan exemplars of blameless innocence that we would never ever ever imagine suggesting that our Demcratic president bend the rules to get a policy through.”
That’s self-destructive. It’s goofy.
It’s just plain political suicide.
I have repeatedly suggested that the Democratic National Committee work up a series of talking points for every Democratic officeholder and fund a series of commercials to air nationwide. The talking points and commercials would all hammer on the same basic point: If you want the economy to get better, vote Democratic, because Republicans are trying to crash the economy.
I guess people like Obama and his advisors think this kind of stuff would be too “divisive.” Well, here’s a clue for you, guys — you’re too late. The US of A is already divided. It’s a political duel to the death in a sewer out there, except our side is armed with nerf guns, while their side is using meathooks.
But when I say this kind of stuff, the late unlamented General Crackpot Fake Name screamed that I have “butt rabies.” So that’s where the Democratic party is right now. A bunch of spineless impotent crawling pathetic worms afflicted with learned helplessness.
And anyone who stands up to suggest a different approach gets smacked down, hard, as a “troll” and “crazy.”
Spaghetti Lee
Also, has anyone noticed that Doug posted a “how do we defeat the Republicans” question and a lot of talk has been about how Democrats defeat themselves and how different factions of Democrats screw each other over?
It seems to be a real pathology. Lots of liberals don’t seem to be able to hold a “rah rah go team” mindset for very long. Someone comes in and notices a hypocrisy, or questions why they should be supporting someone, or accuses another liberal of being too passionate/not passionate enough. There are good sides to this: keeping people honest, avoiding groupthink and agreed-upon wrong conclusions, being able to intelligently critique someone’s logic. Those are all good things and we should hold onto them. The Republicans have spiraled into insanity in part because they can’t do those sorts of things. For sustained political activism that keeps the focus on the enemy, that sort of anti-groupthink mentality has definite drawbacks, though.
Political activism is like sports, or art, or learning law or medicine, or anything that takes time and effort: to really excel at it, you have to cut a lot of other things out of your life and really devote yourself to the cause. And a lot of people can’t/don’t. Of course, the problem is that this isn’t just a hobby or career, but the fate of the nation.
KG
9/11 probably has more to do with where we are as a country today than the 2000 election. If only because a decent percentage of the population hasn’t regained their shit yet.
Chris
@MikeJ:
Yeah, I was about to say… I wonder how much of this notion of Democrats as centrist, can’t-we-all-get-along moderates is based just on looking at white Democrats. I suspect outside of white people, it’s… not quite the same thing.
askew
@Jeremy:
Nah, according to all the white pundits, Hillary is guaranteed all of Obama’s coalition because she deemed to run Obama’s foreign policy. Plus she’ll get the white working class vote as well. The pundits and the Clintons are taking the base for granted again. The base (young and minorities) didn’t line up behind Hillary in 2008 and if a credible primary candidate comes along, I don’t think they’ll line-up for her in 2016. Lots of people remember the race-baiting in 2008 as well as her Iraq vote. That coupled with the incompetent morons she surrounds herself with and her mediocre political skills, I think Deval Patrick or Martin O’Malley could beat her in a primary. I am not sure they’ll be willing to do it though. The media is going to be in her corner 100% during the primaries and most of the big money in the Dem party will be behind her as well. And with her good buddy running the DNC, the primary schedule will be tweaked to make sure it tilts in her favor. There won’t be a repeat of MI/FL in 2016.
greennotGreen
@Comrade Jake: Al Gore never said he invented the internet. http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp As far as I’m concerned, lazy and sociopathic media threw the election to Bush by minimizing Bush’s errors and falsehoods, and amplifying or sometimes simply inventing Gore’s.
Jewish Steel
@Yatsuno:
Are you calling upon me to serve? Reluctantly, I will.
Spaghetti Lee
@danielx:
I’ve noticed it for a long time. Well, as “long” as any 22-year-old can notice things. I’m just a fan of understatement, is all. Besides, the point was to answer Doug’s question about why the right is so much better at fanatical devotion: Part of it is because they have good discipline and messaging and all that, but part of it is because of who they are, people messed up in the head enough to commit themselves to total war.
Basically, I’m saying that Democrats beating each other up about bad messaging or organization is going to miss the point. A working liberal majority is going to be structurally different than a conservative one, because the people are different. Identify the differences and turn them into strengths.
jamick6000
@Chris: actually the current crop of black leaders is very pro establishment (shapton, etc).
Jerzy Russian
@Mandalay:
Al Franken’s response to this is that Bush lost his home country in that same election.
Cacti
@askew:
Hillary has a glass jaw. If anyone can find a way to muck up all the advantages she has, it will be HRC. She already did it once.
r€nato
Actually yeah, I think that day could come about midpoint of Hillary’s two-term presidency. Democrats are a lot like the spouse in a 30 years’ long marriage who’s been beaten and humiliated so relentlessly that she doesn’t know how to have confidence in herself and in her right to say, “THIS, NOT THAT. BECAUSE I SAID SO.”
Winning and thorough domination of the GOP over another few election cycles will do much to cure Democrats of their inferiority complex/bully’s victim syndrome. Republicans truly seem to be trapped in a death spiral of hugging tighter and tighter to their angry aging white male voting bloc. Fixing elections will only delay the denouement.
LeftCoastTom
@Jerzy Russian: …so, Gore won FL and was robbed of it, in a legal battle his personal handicap (Lieberman) didn’t want to contest. Winning FL and TN…seems like it’d be a bit harder to rob.
Kay
I wonder if the grass roots ‘R’s are a little scared, though, coming off 2012. Not the pundits or the professional Republicans, but ordinary rank and file county Republicans. I’ve said this before but ordinary Republicans here believed absolutely and completely that Obama was (I heard this a lot) “toast”. That was well before the phony polling and all that. It was early spring. They never wavered.
I’m helping with a school bond issue campaign here and because this county is majority Republican the entire “team” are Republicans. Not Tea baggers. Just Republicans (hence the support of ‘government schools’). I went tonight to a meeting with them and they were almost deferential towards me on our campaign planning. Like I have the secret election-winning formula from the Kenyan :)
You’d have to know how absolutely unbearably arrogant they were in 2004 to understand what a change this is. I’m just wondering if they’re rattled, like “maybe we’re not ….winners“. I expect a lot of handwringing from Democrats, but not Republicans. OTOH, I’ve never worked with them before on an election, so maybe that confidence was a public face.
askew
@Cacti:
Yep, that is my take on it as well. She made a lot of stupid mistakes in 2008. There is a lot of revisionist history saying that Hillary’s staff and the media bias for Obama sank her candidacy but she was the better candidate. That just wasn’t the case. She lost Iowa because Obama was the better candidate in large venues and in small. She made up that crazy Bosnia lie that would have sunk any other candidate who didn’t have so many friends in the media. Seriously, she lied about her husband sending her into sniper fire for no reason. That was the kind of stupid mistakes she made. However, if she gets the top-notch Obama staffers – Plouffe, Axelrod, Bird, etc. plus all the big money donors, I am not sure another candidate will have the money or expertise to take her down. I’d guess she skips Iowa this time if she has a serious rival. She is a bad fit for the state.
Spaghetti Lee
@askew:
I hope Hillary starts reclaiming old-school yellow dog Dems. In fact, that’s about the best thing I can find in a Clinton presidency. The Democrats have proven they can win a national electorate fairly often, but certain states (read: the South) have been written off on the state and local level. That comes back to bite us with a teabagger-filled congress. I’m not saying we’re going back to Solid South, but if the Dems could contest a few more house seats and senate seats in the South, that would be a big step up. At the very least, it would spread GOP resources thinner. And I think Clinton is the best/only major candidate who can do that.
jamick6000
@Jeremy: I think you have some misconceptions on TARP, this might help clear up some of them: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-tarp-bashing
Mandalay
@Jerzy Russian:
Irrelevant. The poster was suggesting it was “childish” to suggest that Al Gore wasn’t to blame for his loss. I say it is childish to blame anyone except Gore.
He had been VP for 8 years while the economy boomed, but he was wooden, aloof and condescending in his campaign, and treated Bill Clinton like a turd on the carpet.
I’m sorry he lost, but he really didn’t deserve to win based on his campaign. Many factors contributed to Gore’s defeat, but most of them were of his own making.
Jerzy Russian
@LeftCoastTom: I agree Gore could have done a better job with the campaign. On the other hand, as was pointed out earlier, a lot of shit happened that was out of his control, like those butterfly ballots that took a few hundred of his votes away in Florida, Nader’s presence in the race that took more votes, etc.
justawriter
I will go to my grave insisting that Joe Lieberman put Shrub in the White House. Nader would never have gotten one tenth of the support if Tail Gunner Joe (yes, I know who that is supposed to refer to) hadn’t ran his mouth for six months telling supporters how they were crappy Democrats.
I will also note in passing that Obama chose Joe to be his mentor when he joined the Senate.
KG
@Kay: there was a lot of epistemic closure on the right in 2012. Much of my solidly Republican family was the same way. I stopped talking to them about the election because it was like we wer watch two different movies. They were Romney voters (mostly) in 2008 and figured he’d waltz to the win and blamed 2008 on McCain being too soft or something.
I have a feeling the GOP is going to pick a non-crazy in 2016 because my guess is that the crazy wing isn’t as big as it’s bite. They saw what happened to a relatively non-crazy trying to be crazy in 2012. So maybe they’ll want a Sista Soulja moment with the wingtards. Of course, all this probably means Jeb Bush is the nominee…
LeftCoastTom
@Spaghetti Lee: HRC already making clear she’s not hiring Mark Penn and Lanny Davis seems like a major step towards not repeating her mistakes in 2008. I still hope she sees a serious primary challenge – if she’s learned from her mistakes then way cool, if not we might as well learn that in the primary.
askew
@Spaghetti Lee:
She may do better in the South but she’s going to have problems in the Midwest. She is a bad fit for Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc. She’s too big of a foreign policy hawk, she loves dirty politics (this is the fun part) and she is abrasive as hell. All of those are problems in the Midwest. If she is going against Christie, it will be less of a problem because he’s a bigger asshole than she is. Asshole politicians tend to do well on the East coast and poorly in the middle of the country. Asshole female politicans have an even bigger problem in the Midwest.
And depending on Bill’s behavior in 2016 (will he racebait again?), she may have problems with African-American voters which will offset any gains made in white working class votes.
And I know we aren’t supposed to mention this on liberal blogs, but there is a damn good chance that we’ll get a general election Bill sex scandal. There has been a ton of rumors of his infidelity for years and if she gets into the general election the media is going to start publishing those rumors and digging up more dirt. And we all know it is there.
Jerzy Russian
@Mandalay:
Gore has some of the blame, but perhaps not all.
I agree with this. He should have had Bill Clinton hitting the campaign trail with him.
Looking at the bigger picture, I am often puzzled about why the “campaign” should matter at all in most elections. In the specific case of the 2000 election, people basically had a choice between a nitwit, and a relatively well-qualified individual who was the Vice President during a period of mostly good economic times. How hard could it be to decide who to choose?
Mnemosyne
@justawriter:
I don’t know how seriously I take that — Republican Bob Corker is Elizabeth Warren’s Senate mentor. So, what, that obviously means she’s a Republican-lite who’s planning to screw us all over?
ETA: And, yes, Warren personally chose Corker as her Senate mentor, she was not randomly assigned to him.
Ted & Hellen
@Jeremy:
Maybe it wasn’t a “mistake.”
Liebs is a douche of the highest order; it was obvious to anyone.
askew
@LeftCoastTom:
Mark Penn and Lanny Davis didn’t cost her the nomination. Her refusal to own up to her Iraq vote did especially with Iowa as the first state. Her compulsive lying. Her weird attacks on Democratic voters – insulting Iowans, caucus states, calling parts of Virginia the “real Virginia”. Her need to sling mud against a candidate with sky high personal approval ratings. Her inability to manage her staff or her husband all played a bigger role than Mark Penn did. She just used her staff as scapegoats instead of taking any responsibility for her failure.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@LeftCoastTom: I don’t know if she likes that jackass Ed Rendell– fracking and Wall St lobbyist, Simpson-Bowles fanatic and Pete Peterson worshipper– as much as he loves her, but I hope she keeps him and everyone like him away from her.
LeftCoastTom
@Jerzy Russian: It was Gore’s job to communicate that he wasn’t the nitwit in the race, without pissing people off.
Mnemosyne
@Jerzy Russian:
It wasn’t hard to choose, which is why Gore won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes. Bush only “won” on a technicality thanks to shenanigans in Florida.
I just like to remind people of this every so often: most Americans wanted Al Gore as their president in 2000 and it was only through cheating and shenanigans that Bush managed to push himself over the top.
Ted & Hellen
@aimai:
Except, reality.
Ted & Hellen
@Jane2:
lol
Mandalay
@justawriter:
Don’t do that, because even if you are right, you are still wrong. Gore picked Lieberman as his running mate, and could/should have told him to STFU.
Gore put Bush in the White House, not Lieberman (or Nader or chads or SCOTUS). Blaming Lieberman for Bush’s victory is like Liz Cheney blaming the clerk for her residency problem.
Kay
@KG:
I think so too. But, these aren’t crazy Republicans. It’s like the insurance agency Republican and the car dealer Republican and the marketing woman from the hospital. I do think they’re “base” voters, in that I bet they vote in GOP primaries. We were looking at numbers on money and the school district has lost 1.5 million a year since Kasich took office. To me it was like this freighted moment because I’m thinking “SEE? That’s what you did!” But it just didn’t seem to sink in at all.
It was interesting for me, because it’s new. It’s a whole other world over there. They were like “can you get labor?”
Oh, sure. I’ll go get “labor”. Be right back!
I WILL actually pitch to “labor” but we don’t call them that. It’s not a big place. We use their names. They have leaders, with names.
askew
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Rendell’s been a petty asshole on MSNBC towards Obama since he beat Hillary because he thought he was getting a cabinet post in her admin IMO. I think he gets a cabinet position but I don’t think he gets VP.
LeftCoastTom
@askew: Well, that’s why I hope she gets a serious primary challenge, so we can see.
As for blaming, or not, staff…first, such blame doesn’t absolve her, it reflects on her, because she picked the staff. Second…some of those faults you mentioned are perfectly consistent with wanting Penn and Davis around. You want a spokesperson who went on to represent a murderous dictator? You want a pollster and “strategist” who uses WSJ columns to sell services his lobbying firm is pushing (the “microtrends” stuff, and particularly the “glamping” take-downs)? That reflects on you, not just on them.
Roger Moore
@askew:
I think it won’t happen that way. Assuming the extreme right really does start kicking everyone out of the party, they’ll start losing, even in areas they thought were safe. At that point, the party will collapse, and we’ll get a new party that splits the Democrats and pulls away some fraction of the right-wing loons along different lines from our current split. My guess is that we’ll get an alliance of the ultra-rich with the socially but not economically progressive part of the Democrats on one side and a fusion of economic populism with social conservatism on the other.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: She is trying to play by the old rules of the Senate. Community and collaboration. The most successful legislators in the upper house have across-the-isle relationships that are very useful.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Really, it wasn’t SCOTUS’s fault? The completely partisan Bush v Gore decision was a foregone conclusion and everyone expected that the Supreme Court would act in a nakedly partisan fashion?
Sorry, no. I understand the anger towards Gore and the urge to punish him for Bush’s cheating, but Gore wasn’t the one who cheated.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@askew: Tweety once referred to Tom Ridge as “Governor Ridge”, and Rendell went on like a full two minute tirade about how retired politicians should be addressed by the highest office they had, and Cabinet Secretaries outrank governors so it should be “Secretary Ridge”. It was really fucking weird, aristocratic, and an interesting window in to Rendell’s PUMA bitterness.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
I actually don’t blame Warren at all — it’s probably a good idea to try and make friends with colleagues outside of your own party. But we can’t say that Obama choosing Lieberman as his mentor is a clear sign of his conservative tendencies but Warren’s choice of an actual conservative Republican as her mentor is meaningless.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
But the conventional wisdom of the VSPs said that the country was reeling in disgust from the president’s behavior with Monica Lewinski and that Gore should distance himself from that as much as possible. And apparently, Gore believed it.
Mandalay
@Jerzy Russian:
One reason it’s hard is because the media want a horse race, and raise bizarre questions like “Who would you rather have a beer with?” and “Who would you prefer in your living room for the next four years”?
I don’t know how important those bogus issues are to real voters, but for those who care I suspect they decided that Bush was way better than Gore. Bush was personable, but Gore was not.
askew
@Roger Moore:
I don’t think those will be the two parties because that would leave the majority of Democrats without a party. According to polling, most Democrats are socially liberal and economically populist. There are some populist/social conservatism and socially progressive/economic regressives in the party but they are the minority. I could see a return to the smaller tent socially liberal/economically progressive Democratic Party, a Republican party that is socially conservative/economic regressive and a third party that rises up to be economically regressive and socially progressive.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Or the ultra-rich will simply stop funding the crazies, which will pull a good part of the rug out from under them.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne:
Who is “We”, Kemosabe?
Mandalay
@Chris:
As though the Kochs, Adelsons and Trumps of this world aren’t a little crazy themselves.
askew
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That is the driver behind most of the politicians and pundits who are still nursing PUMA bitterness. They all were expecting promotions and better access under a President Hillary admin and are bitter that they are stuck on the sidelines. There are the exceptions like Joan Walsh who is just racist, but for the most part it is about ambition not racism.
Chris
@Mandalay:
They are. But I suspect a good chunk of the superrich are pragmatic enough not to continue backing losing horses.
Keith G
@askew: Interestingly enough, both Tweety and Mr Ridge were incorrect. This is a point which has annoyed me for a very long time.
justawriter
@Mandalay: OK, I can concede that Lieberman was just the worst mistake of many that Gore made. I have had a problem with the man even before he stabbed Clinton in the back during Monicagate. He was part of Tipper’s video game censorship club, showing his personal distaste for first amendment rights.
In general, I got sick of going around knocking on doors, hang literature and making phone calls for people who would rather I not pollute their party. And then after they get elected, defend them because the assholes who trying to pull them down make the Neanderthals look like a Pride Parade. I’m still at it, despite being sick of it all. Had to make nice with a coal-loving, climate change denying, gun toting Senator this last go round just because she will vote for Harry Ried for Leader. I’m too old for this shit.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
Well, sure, if you want to be a hypocrite and decry Obama’s choice of mentor while dismissing Warren’s choice of mentor as meaningless, you go right ahead and do that. But don’t expect me not to call you out for your hypocrisy in giving Warren a pass.
Mandalay
@Chris:
Agreed. But we shouldn’t conclude that Adelson, Trump and the Kochs were defeated just because Romney bombed.
They lost the obvious big battle (the presidency) but if you look at most issues (Israel, union busting, abortion rights, corporate welfare, Wall St reform, disenfranchising the poor) the super rich are getting exactly what they want, ably assisted by our dozing, compliant media.
Roger Moore
@askew:
Maybe so, but I bet most of them care more about one than the other, some of them fairly strongly. What imagine happening is the 1% giving up on the now useless husk of the Republican party and moving to the Democrats. With their money, they’ll try to dilute the economic populism but maintain the social liberalism, maybe even pushing it further out to include drug decriminalization. That will make the party less attractive to working class and union voters, who will wind up making common cause with the less well-off Republicans. I think they’ll still be socially conservative, but more in the sense of emphasizing personal social bonds- family and church- than trying to enforce their religious beliefs.
@Chris:
I think this misses the essential point that a lot of the ultra-rich backers of the Tea Party are as crazy as the rank and file. They aren’t going to pull their money away from the Teahadists until it’s clear that they’re not getting a return on their investment.
Mandalay
@justawriter:
Ha!….did not know that. I will try to ratchet up my loathing for Lieberman, but I am not sure it is possible.
BTW, since you care about first amendment rights, never forget who wanted to criminalize flag burning back in 2005…
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Which is exactly the kind of no-return investment that the “Republican share of the vote dwindling towards 27%” thing you were responding to would be. That was my point. You were saying it could lead to a big reshuffling of the parties; I’m saying it’s just as likely that the teabaggers would find more and more of their astroturf donors dropping away and funding less-crazy candidates. If nothing else, I think the 1%ers would be more inclined to try that first, before they went for anything more radical.
(Although as Mandalay was right to point out, there’ll probably still be a hardcore fringe of 1%ers to fund teabagger causes no matter what – after all, the Koch family was backing John Birchers even at the height of the “liberal consensus” years when no one was taking them seriously).
justawriter
@Mandalay: Honestly, I was never a fan of any of the Clintons, or their posse, but again, supporting the awful against the truly horrific.
lojasmo
@askew:
I voted for Obama in the 2008 primary and both generals. I will almost certainly vote for ABC in the 2016 primary, though against the republican in the general.
Fuck you, TH.
Ted & Hellen
@mclaren:
Thank you, McLaren.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Process matters.
lojasmo
@askew:
meh. Franken and Klobushar are abrasive as hell.
Clinton is Just meh.
lojasmo
@mclaren:
Because magic, amirite?
lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
Thanks, repubot.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: Oh wow. Startling. Weird. Holy confusion Batman. Have you stumbled upon Goofy’s opium stash and begun smoking it?
I have never…
It’s an issue I have never thought about at all until you brought it up. So….
Either you are high, or not high and still befuddled, or you are purposefully lying. One of those three
One. of. those. three..
Omnes Omnibus
@Keith G: You may not have raised as an issue, but it has been raised by some as proof that Obama is a secret conservative or something.
Mandalay
@Keith G:
Option three.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
I think the part of the 1% who are backing the Tea Party now will keep backing them until they’ve destroyed the Republican party (or the 1%ers doing so die off themselves). They see the party as existing to serve them, not the other way around, so they’re going to keep pushing to get their preferred candidates within the party, even if it risks destroying the party in the long term. If and when they destroy the Republican Party with their antics, they’ll move on to something else. That will be easier because a lot of the less extreme 1%ers are already in the habit of giving money to both parties so they have some leverage no matter who wins. The ultra-rich will always have a party as long as they exist.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
And by “you” you mean justawriter, who is the person who brought up Obama’s choice of mentor, right? Because that’s the only reason I brought up the counterexample of Warren’s mentor — someone else used Obama’s choice as somehow emblematic of Obama’s secret Lieberman-like conservatism.
Keith G
@Omnes Omnibus: I am sure she has a list of 205 names* , nonetheless counselor, she was accusing me. Has she no decency?
*Google it if you must.
askew
@lojasmo:
No one who follows politics seriously would call Klobuchar abrasive. She is the epitome of Minnesota Nice and Franken had a hard campaign for his seat and has spent the past 5 years keeping his head down and not making any waves in order to win re-election. And both of them managed to win races in Minnesota something Hillary has yet to accomplish.
Mandalay
@Roger Moore:
That may be true for issues such as Israel and corporate welfare. But some social issues won’t travel. If you are a billionaire and opposed to abortion I can’t imagine that you will flip any financial support to the Democrats, no matter how badly the Republicans are doing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Keith G: I don’t need to google it, but condescend away. And don’t conflate the speeches of Joes McCarthy and Welch.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
You certainly take everything you read on the internet personally, don’t you? I will try to be more precise in my pronouns now that I know that you will take every iteration of “you” as meaning “you, Keith G, personally” rather than “you who thinks Obama’s choice of Lieberman was deeply meaningful.”
Here, I’ll restate what I said just for you, since you found it deeply confusing:
Keith G
@Mnemosyne: I did not see that comment. I was just interested that anyone would try to read deeper motives into Warren’s Senate mentor choice other than basic networking. Thus I saw no need to burden Warren with any doubt about her ideals based on her interaction with Obama’s golfing pal, Corker.
Keith G
@Mnemosyne:
Your restatement aside, the above comment seemed quite direct and specific.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
You don’t think they’d ease up on the ideology before they actually got to the “destroy the Republican Party” point? I mean, the whole “we’re losing elections and we’re going to keep losing them because the public doesn’t like what we’re selling” thing is basically what happened to them after the Great Depression, when they had to wait 20 years to take back the White House. Eventually, the party moderated… and not by abandoning the 1%; even in the Eisenhower days the GOP was still the main interface between Wall Street and the federal government. Wall Street just happened to wise up, even if it took them forever and a day.
It’s possible that this batch is crazier than the one that caused the Great Depression (though from what I read about that era, the old batch seems to’ve been about as entitled and about as ruthless). I guess I’m just not convinced that that’s the case.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
Since I linked to the comment I was replying to, perhaps you could have followed that link to see what I was replying to instead of assuming I was just making a comment up out of the blue. But I guess your clicky-finger is sore tonight, so you didn’t bother.
And yes, when I said “you” just now, I meant “you, Keith G, personally.”
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
And you assumed that “you” meant “you, Keith G, personally” rather than “you, justawriter, the person who made the actual comment about Obama that I was responding to.”
Does your ego ever get in the way of everyday life? Do you always assume that every conversation is about you, personally?
Roger Moore
@Chris:
So we have solid evidence that the 1% is willing to drive the party into a ditch that it takes a generation to get back out of. They’re doing it again, but the demographic ditch they’re steering toward is potentially bigger than the economic one they got into back in 1929. And the crazy part of the 1% doesn’t even have to steer them into the ditch, since they’re headed straight for it. They just have to keep fighting for the wheel for long enough that nobody else can turn them away.
Desert Rat
He couldn’t be more wrong. To hell with anybody stupid enough to believe that anybody needed a piece of crap like Lieberman on that ticket.
Gore didn’t need a moderate on the ticket. Gore WAS the moderate on that ticket. By 2000, rank and file Democrats had had enough of “Third Way” politics for a while. Gore needed an older school Dem who could appeal to working class voters. Ironically, a Joe Biden type, or someone like him would have been a far better choice.
As a matter of fact, I’d suggest that Gore’s choice of Lieberman was the single biggest factor in his “loss” of the election. Lieberman was an anchor who cost a lot more base votes than he brought in people from the moderates. If Gore picks another Democrat with a broader appeal to the base, he likely solidifies his base, undercuts Nader and wins the election by comfortable enough a margin to avoid seeing this thing going to the Supremes.
Instead, he picked an empty suit for a running mate, who brought nothing in the way of energy on the campaign trail, and also proved to be a shitty debater. Let’s face it, even though he has all the personal charm of a rattlesnake, Dick Cheney kicked Lieberman’s ass in that debate. Lieberman LOST that election for Gore.
Personally, I knew we were screwed when my mother-in-law, a died in the wool Republican, was considering voting for the Dems because of Lieberman.
James E. Powell
This is a very strange thread. There are stretches of comments that appear to be cut & pasted from the Great Orange Satan from several years ago. Seriously, almost word for word.
How can anyone talk about 2000 without taking into account the War on Gore that Bob Somerby has so ably documented. I remember it from real time. Without the consistent hammering from a hostile corporate press/media, Gore would have won that election by 3 or 4 points.
Too many forget that while the press/media were constantly slamming Gore, they were also pumping up Bush and covering for his blatant lying. They did not go after is national guard service. If Gore or any Democrat had been in that situation, it would have been a 24/7 feeding frenzy up to the moment of his quitting the race. I could go on, but for anyone who cares about the truth of what happened, I don’t need to.
I’m with Doug J and the people who might be called the more combative end of the party. I wish that not only Obama, but the whole of the Democratic Party had started 2009 with the goal of shredding the Republicans for the lies and corruption of the Bush/Cheney Junta.There should have been several months of kicking them for the tax cuts, for deregulation, for Iraq, for outsourcing to corporate supporters. And the whole of Wall Street should have had the kind of investigations that the Republicans did with Whitewater.
It would have set the Ds up to win or at least hold serve in 2010. But as usual our betters know better. Just like Dick Gephardt in the Rose Garden.
James E. Powell
@Desert Rat:
As a matter of fact, I’d suggest that Gore’s choice of Lieberman was the single biggest factor in his “loss” of the election.
I have always despised Holy Joe, but his being on the ticket is what gave Gore a chance in Florida. That’s why he was on the ticket.
Suffern ACE
@askew: I will say this. In the unlikely event that she chooses Evan Bayh, I will not vote for her. I can’t see why she would chose him, but I if she does, I would probably suffer a heat attack and be unable to make it to the polls.
Jado
@Ted & Hellen:
I am all for compromise with the opposition – the Blue Dog Democrats.
Compromising with Manson-level lunatics is a non-starter. Them Republicans is Crazee. I recommend against interaction with the Crazee
PanurgeATL
If the Republicans punch hippies, Democrats need to be punching haircuts, not just Galtians. But Democrats and liberals have decided to say “yes, but” to haircuts because they think they need to do it in order to have a fighting chance (and, after all, lots of them are haircuts themselves). So we have two haircut parties and no hippie party–and it’s largely the left of center’s own fault. How do you fix that?