Richard Mayhew is absolutely correct– the wingnuts are going to bring the crazy no matter who the Democratic nominee is in 2016. The fatigue is on MY PART. I just don’t want to go through it again. Whenever the Clinton’s run, it’s like I have to spend a year watching the same bad movie four times a day for the 100,000th time. I think of a Clinton run in 2016 and I feel like I’m about to be locked into a room for a year and forced to watch, ala the Clockwork Orange, Stop or My Momma Will Shoot 24 hours a day.
It’s not the facts. It’s me. I’m the one with Clinton fatigue. I don’t want to go back to Hillaryis44 and the NoQuarter nonsense and all the splits within the party over Hillary. I don’t care Chelsea is pregnant. I don’t care that George Bush likes to paint or one of his daughters is on the tube. Just bring me some fresh material, please. It’s just wearying, especially with my wingnut past and having to relive my wrongness over and over again.
Violet
Turn off the news and Get Out the Vote. That’s the best antidote to wingnut fatigue.
yam
You’re just chained to a rock and you have your wrongness pulled out every day by a Villager, just to have it grow back overnight.
I’m with you…
Rafer Janders
If Clinton ran, I’d probably support.
But as a matter of dynastic politics in a supposedly (!) egalitarian society, it would be really nice if the presidential succession in my adult lifetime wasn’t Bush / Clinton / Bush / Obama / Clinton…..Surely there’s some fresh blood somewhere?
hildebrand
Yep – all of the above. I simply don’t want to wade through all of it again, especially for a candidate that is hardly our best choice. Yes, she can win. And yes, I understand that that is all the bar we need her to clear. I get that. That said, can’t we have a better choice? Do we have to keep fishing in the same bloody pond? I don’t want a coronation of a rerun. I want a vigorous contest between the best that the Democrats can offer, with a chance to move on from the Clinton years.
I don’t think that is asking too much.
ranchandsyrup
Part of me wants her to win so it will clear the fundraising logjam that the Clinton family is — at least until Chelsea runs.
stickler
I agree. That it’s Hillary just makes it so much worse. There’s something about her that sends a certain segment of the population (largely, though not limited to, older white men) into frothing madness. They can rationally discuss any other politician — but when her name is mentioned, their eyes roll back into their heads and they start babbling about green pantsuits, black helicopters, and death panels. I have no idea why this is. I don’t love Hillary myself, but I think she’s a mostly-competent, center-left politician. She’s flawed. She’s not some 50-foot-tall castrating vessel for the undead Lilith.
And the media circus — please God, let’s not start shooting watermelons with shotguns again.
raven
It’s all bullshit. Don’t mean nuthin, drive on.
gussie
@stickler: “They can rationally discuss any other politician …”
Huh?
raven
Cool footage of Obama just walking on the mall saying hi to folks!!!
jl
@Violet:
” Turn off the news and Get Out the Vote. That’s the best antidote to wingnut fatigue ”
I agree. Pay heed to Violet’s wise advice, Cole.
Look there is constant rerun BS about everything. The new BraJolina scandal, latest Cloony romance (or bromance wink wink nudge nudge,paging Cary Grant, he’ll explain it to you). It is all ignorable.
You might be forced to put up with it in your consciousness during the campaign, but you would have to put up with insane poo flinging no matter who it is during the campaign. Day after the election, tune it out. It’s all pure BS of the lowest order.
Edit: and you have to take the good and ignore the bad. If it’s HRC, maybe get a few insane GOP Housers shooting spaghetti squash in their backyards again, doing ‘investigations’. Good for laughs and keeps them out of trouble.
raven
‘The bear is loose!’ Obama surprises tourists on the mall
hildebrand
@Violet: If Clinton is serious about running – I would like her to get serious about getting the base out for this Fall’s election. You want to earn my vote, get out there right now and support Democrats. Frankly, any Democrat thinking about running better be getting out there and drumming up support for the home team.
PsiFighter37
I won’t enthusiastically support her, but there’s zero doubt that I will vote for her. I will be damned if we throw SCOTUS away for yet another generation if we don’t elect a Democrat to the White House.
That said, I do NOT trust her political instincts at all. People think she righted the ship after getting smoked in the post-2008 primaries…no. In fact, she basically pulled out the right-wing playbook and played to her base (which was older, white, conservative Democrats) the rest of the way, and the only reason she mopped up at the end of primary season was that Team Obama was already pivoted to the general. Case in point: she never would have won South Dakota (the last primary, along with Montana) if Team Obama had really been trying – she got obliterated in that part of the country during the rest of primary season.
Yes, it’s going to be tiring. But if it means incremental progress – namely in destroyed the GOP stranglehold on the House, wiping out a shitload of vulnerable GOP senators (Ron Johnson, Mark Kirk, Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte, and Pat Toomey, specifically, and potentially Rob Portman), and being able to do something meaningful instead of playing defense and doing virtually nothing of worth (which is what the past 3+ years have been), it will be worth it.
But yeah, it will be a lot more tiring and frustrating than Team Obama has been. And it will be even more so if assholes like Lanny Davis and Mark Penn are allowed anywhere near the West Wing.
the Conster
The wingnuts are going to be wingnuts no matter what – to me, the fatigue isn’t about those fucktards – it’s about the media hacks. Maureen Dowd and George Stephanopolous and Sally Quinn will be digging deep into their Rolodoxes looking for new ways to panty sniff.
danimal
“Just bring me some fresh material, please. It’s just wearying, especially with my wingnut past and having to relive my wrongness over and over again.”
But you don’t understand something that Frank Luntz has probably push-polled for months already. The GOP isn’t going to go back to Vince Foster, the lesbian rumors or TravelGate, they’ve progressed from those trivial issues years ago.
BENGHAZI!!! is, in fact, new material. The crazy will continue, but the targets and the issues change over time. There is nobody the Dems could nominate who won’t be subject to teh crazy.
jl
@stickler:
” And the media circus — please God, let’s not start shooting watermelons with shotguns again. ”
It was pumpkins. And not a shotgun. No responsible insane GOPer would do such an incompetent investigation into the HRC international drug cartel murder spree fest, one of the most infamous ‘unknown knowns’ of our time.
max
the wingnuts are going to bring the crazy no matter who the Democratic nominee is in 2016.
Yes.
I think of a Clinton run in 2016 and I feel like I’m about to be locked into a room for a year and forced to watch, ala the Clockwork Orange, Stop or My Momma Will Shoot 24 hours a day.
It’s like The Movie Channel! Watch the blockbuster hit The X-Men: Whatever The Fuck This One Is About, over and over again, every two hours for the next fucking two months.
At any rate, what we’ve had here is pretty much a replay of the entire Clinton administration (now with more overt racism!) over the last five years. Of course, if someone else got nominated and won, we’d get yet another replay of the Clinton administration (INPEACH Part III!), and if they lost, we’d get a replay of the first term of the fucking Bush administration. (Complete with the Dem caucus trying to be reasonable and moderate and shit – also known as whine like whipped dogs) And boy, I’d bet you’d be having flashbacks then!
It’s just wearying, especially with my wingnut past and having to relive my wrongness over and over again.
I wish I could help you, man, but I’ve never been a winger – instead I’ve always been a ‘fringe leftie’ (if all the centrist SOB’s decided that putting baby on spikes on the Mall in DC was the thing to do, anybody opposed would be a fringe bleeding heart leftie – so that’s how much that’s worth). BUT, I’ve repeatedly opposed lots of things like various idiot wars and banking deregulation, and obviously I was fringe lunatic who didn’t understand the free market on the first go round and obviously some kind of communist moocher radical when I point out that I was correct on the first go-round. In some respects, that’s worse.
My conscience, though, is untroubled, so I dunno what to tell you except you can say you got over it.
max
[‘Life’s a piece of shit, when you look at it…’]
PsiFighter37
@raven: That’s cool. If GWB ever tried that, he would’ve gotten an earful from multiple people.
jl
@raven: Yeah, I saw that. Nice clip.
But, see, any Democrat can run, or be elected and you just plug and chug.
Democrat X joked that ‘The bear is loose”. OMG, the fascist commie admits that he is preying on the American People! Twitchy will run with that for a week, and the Fox and Friends will do five segments discussing what hidden signals and insinuendos are in that joke, except one of two doofus twins will get mixed up about what a bear is, exactly.
Calouste
@Rafer Janders:
Fresh blood? Like a Nixon or a Dole? The Republicans haven’t had those on the ticket in a while.
Suffern ACE
Is Clinton fatigue a real thing we have to worry about, like someone spoiling a movie we want to see, or something that’s fun to worry about but imaginary, like whether or not smart appliances will judge us and find us wanting?
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
Dick Cheney’s ears just perked up.
JDM
It’s just wearying, especially with my wingnut past and having to relive my wrongness over and over again.
It must be very strange to think back on your past circa 2001-2002. Being a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, but unable to get anyone to notice. Like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
:)
It was nice to get a new episode of Wingnut Fever rather than a rerun/reboot. I wouldn’t mind seeing a new version starring Joe Biden, or better yet Elizabeth Warren. Can you imagine an Alan Grayson episode? That’d be fun.
Citizen Alan
John, I can foresee one moment that would make everything worthwhile. Picture it: Hillary is standing behind a podium at the Presidential Debate. [Whichever psychotic wins the GOP primary] starts talking about some twenty year old “Clinton scandal.” Hillary just sighs, shakes her head and says, in her best Gipper impersonation, “There you go again.” And Peggy Noon immediately dies of a stroke.
hildebrand
@danimal:
True.
For me, though, its not about that – its about the fact that Clinton, while she can win (and yes, I will vote for her if she wins the nomination), is old hat legislatively and administratively. It might be different if I thought that she would be able to transcend her brand – she can’t. It will be creeping incremental ideas in meandering directions all over again. She will learn one lesson from the Obama years – don’t shoot for big things, lest you get your brains beaten out by foe and friend. She doesn’t have Obama’s ability to play the long game, at least, not as far as I have seen it.
gocar mozart
Change is good. When you have been in an Iron Maiden for twenty years, being waterboarded for the next four seems like a step up. I see your point.
JPL
@Suffern ACE: I don’t know. She certainly doesn’t inspire me so I won’t donate. She might inspire others though. I think the republican attacks are going to wear thin at some point or at least I hope. At this point most people have fond memories of Bill’s presidency so that might help.
also, too.. I fear she is the right of Nixon.. just as Obama is the right of St. Ronny.
Litlebritdifrnt
If she hires the total incompetent Mark Penn to run her campaign again I will sit this one out and not do a damn thing to get her elected. If she hires one of the Obama geniuses then I will pound the pavement and do whatever I can to get her in the Whitehouse. As far as I am concerned when she hired Penn, who didn’t even understand how primaries worked, it was a serious error of leadership. She enriched Penn to the point of avarice, for absolutely nothing. As far as I know she is still in debt to him. I mean we all know that this entire exercise is a way for people to make money but make money doing something you are good at, not make money being a total incompetent.
Baud
Jesus fucking midterms. Who cares?
chopper
i just can’t wait for the triumphant return of the PUMAs. that’s gonna be a fun time.
PsiFighter37
@Baud: Might as well get used to it – this shit is going to be NON-STOP once the midterms are done.
Cassidy the totes adorbs sociopath
@Baud: I agree.
chopper
@Citizen Alan:
i’d call that a win-win.
gnomedad
Can’t wait for “reparations” to (re?) enter the Wingnut word salad.
hells littlest angel
In other words, Mr Cole, you feel exactly like the Republicans want you to feel.
Violet
John, what you have is Wingnut Fatigue. Just because you’ve seen this episode before (“The One with The Clintons”) doesn’t mean the next episode will be much different. Sure there will be a slightly different storyline but the characters will be the same. The general themes will be the same. The lying and stupidity will be the same.
You’re tired of this show. You want to watch something else. I’m right there with you. The only way that will happen is if the Republican party has so much infighting that they end up focusing on themselves and not the Democrats. Then it’s Wingnut vs Wingnut: Cage Match. That would be a much more entertaining show.
Litlebritdifrnt
John @ top. I can feel for you. I was a RWNJ for a while during the war period because I was a former member of the military like you. Eventually I came to realize that the republicans love the military while they are on active duty and could not give a shit about them once they are out and are veterans seeking assistance, just as the republicans worship fetuses until the minute they exit the womb at which point they couldn’t give a shit if they starve to death. Just as the republicans worship firefighters and first responders when they are fighting fires but consider them moochers when they live long enough to retire and start collecting their pensions and thereby begin “bankrupting municipalities”. These people are nuts.
Laertes
Meh. Splitting the party is what primaries are for. Then they end, and it all gets put back together. I liked HRC in 2006, hated her guts in 2008, and by 2009 I was back to liking her just fine.
Something like half a dozen inconsequential bozos held a grudge after the 2008 primaries. Some other half-dozen will after the next one too. Hell, maybe it’ll be the same half-dozen? Nobody gives a shit. Bozos gonna boze.
Cassidy the totes adorbs sociopath
@Litlebritdifrnt: Tey don’t love the military. They love war and killing.
Cassidy
@Litlebritdifrnt: They don’t live the military, just war and killing.
Woodrowfan
yep. well put!`
jl
When I was very young, I remember seeing a TV Guide plot synopsis of a Gomer Pule rerun: “Gomer falls down”.
Don’t remember whether it was real, or a spoof of TV Guide. I was probably too young to know the difference. Pretty much the same thing for GOPer and teabagger attack nonsense. No on forces you to watch it all, or waste time getting real close and personal so you can smell the poo just flung.
Every time Cole worries about this, he should think about starting edifying and productive hobbies, and the benefits of working out one’s bad karma. Whatever happened to the Cole garden project anyway? That will get him away from the noisebox, intertubes and deadtree press.
burnspbesq
@Rafer Janders:
The junior Senator from New York. The California Attorney General.
It’s like being a Mets fan. All the exciting players are in triple-A getting experience.
Brian R.
@JPL:
Whatever meds your psychiatrist has you on, they’re not working.
JPL
@Baud: The only advantage of trying to maintain a majority during the midterms is so you can add to it during the 2016 elections. Truth be known, even if the repubs win, so what. Obama will veto every bill and they won’t have the votes to overturn his vetoes. In other words, it’s the same we have now.
NotMax
The Pillory Hillary Brigade’s drumbeat long ago receded to a background noise loop which is eminently tune-outable. for this observer.
burnspbesq
Cole,
Drive down to Raleigh for one of the Moral Monday protests. March, sing, get arrested. Who knows, you might meet a nice girl while you’re being booked.
Brian R.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Yeah, if she goes with that assclown Penn again, I’m walking.
Keith G
@raven: Surprise visit to the Mall, good.
Surprise visit to the V.A., better
edit
@burnspbesq:
Yeah, but if he brought her home, she would end up on Shawn’s lap.
JPL
@Brian R.: Nixon had a plan for health care similar to Obama’s. He thought the insurance companies should control it. He also started the EPA and methadone clinics.
also.. i might be cynical but the republicans have moved so far right that I don’t recognize their party.
also.. Even Ronny didn’t have capital gains at fifteen percent
danimal
@burnspbesq: Mets fans are lucky. I’m a Padres fan, and I’m pretty sure the A level team in Lake Elsinore can outscore them right now.
hells littlest angel
@jl: And a synopsis of the Andy Griffith show: “Goober changes a lightbulb.”
It was a parody of TV Guide, but it was actually published in TV Guide.
If only I could remember important things.
bemused
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I think we could make a very long list of what Republicans profess to love that they would just as soon punish or destroy.
JaneE
I want to debate policies and programs and implementations of same, not people and their human foibles or lack thereof. But I am just old.
Kevin
Richards point is entirely correct though – who cares about Clinton fatigue, because no matter who runs on the Dem side, the exact same grind is going to happen. So ranting against Hillary for what the Republicans are going to do is utterly pointless. THey will do it regardless of who runs.
If Elizabeth Warren runs, get ready for 2 years of “not a real indian, socialist commie, eh…look at that short hair, definite lesbian”. So just roll with it. There is no escaping the show that awaits any Dem candidate. Or are you already forgetting Kenyan muslim socialist gay drug addict Barry O’Bambi?
Schlemizel
@JPL:
Though, if truth be told, the tapes indicate that Nixon’s goal on healthcare was to enrich the insurance companies. He was quite clear he wanted to fuck over the average person.
Your point is taken. I think the worst thing that has happened over the last 40 years is that on several issues the Clintons, hell Obama, is to the right of Nixon. Fer cripes sake they are to the right of St. Ronald! Thats not entirely their fault as the brain damaged electorate seems incapable of recognizing this shift and the immense damage it is doing to a formerly great nation.
David Koch
Cole,
Why are you even bringing this up?
Isn’t this out of the blue
What gives?
Keith G
@chopper:
I imagine about the only thing that will change will be the pronouns.
LABiker
Maybe Ralph Nader will run again!
Villago Delenda Est
@LABiker: Bite your tongue!
Villago Delenda Est
Dammit, one of my comments got tossed into the damn spam filter. Please fish it out. Thank you.
Schlemizel
@LABiker:
THAT WOULD BE GREAT! Jed v HRC v Raiphie!
He can tell us all again how he wants Bush to win because it will guarantee his election in 4 years.
How does a man live to that age & remain that stupid?
Laertes
@David Koch:
You know our host. Always marching in lock-step with Sully.
Patrick
@stickler:
Do you think they have discussed Obama on a rational basis over the last 6-8 years? Do you think the birth certificate was based on a rationality? Or him being a Muslim etc etc.
It literally doesn’t matter who runs. Today’s GOP listens to AM Radio where they trade conspiracy theories based on absolutely nothing. Warren could run and they will make up stuff about her.
Schlemizel
@Villago Delenda Est:
Thats what you get for trying to get us to buy Vi’s agra and Sea Alice at your ka-see-know
Jim, Foolish Literalist
A dubiously sourced Politico article set him off.
The President cares deeply about the troops; he visits the wounded in the hospitals all the time; it’s just not his style to make a public deal of it.
I hope against hope this will temper your knee-jerk sanctimonious douchebaggery. But I know it won’t.
jnfr
I am all about voter turnout in 2014. I refuse to even think about 2016 at this point. I just want to keep the Senate in our hands so that I don’t have to watch McConnell gloat for the next two years. That is something I don’t ever want to see.
My Senator, Mark Udall, is a good guy and a reasonably good progressive. He’s worth working for and worth keeping in office. Same for our Gov. Hickenlooper.
Voter turnout. That’s the key. Get out and work the vote!
Villago Delenda Est
@Schlemizel: This time I don’t think I used a naughty word, though. Just your usual FYWP moment.
JPL
@Schlemizel: That’s also the danger if the repubs take control of the Senate. It doesn’t appear that the repubs have suffered by taking control of the House. In GA there are two candidates that are extreme and could win. One is Hice who is in Raven’s district. He’s to the right of Broun. The other is the one running for Kingston’s seat who wants to kill the TSA agents cuz they are nazi’s or something.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Link?
EDIT: Never mind, saw your update.
Barry
@stickler: ” That it’s Hillary just makes it so much worse. There’s something about her that sends a certain segment of the population (largely, though not limited to, older white men) into frothing madness. They can rationally discuss any other politician — but when her name is mentioned, their eyes roll back into their heads and they start babbling about green pantsuits, black helicopters, and death panels. I have no idea why this is.”
Note that when Obama beat her, the hatred transferred with zero lag and considerable amplification.
Whomever is elected as a Democratic politician will face strong hate, pumped up by money and abetted by the media.
Brian R.
@JPL:
The Nixon comparison wasn’t what struck me as insane — he was very much a continuation of the Great Society in terms of domestic legislation (in addition to what you named there, he also made food stamps a massive program, instituted the first-ever peacetime wage and price controls for a while, launched OSHA and proposed a negative income tax that would’ve meant direct cash payments to the poor).
It was the idea that Obama is in anyfuckingway to the right of Reagan. Pick a topic — government spending, foreign relations, Supreme Court nominations, environmental policy, education, civil rights, health care, whatever — and there’s not a single fact to back up that kind of claim. At all.
Schlemizel
@JPL: They long ago scraped through the bottom of the barrel and are deep into the filth that was under the barrel. I bust my ass for Dems and have to settle for some pretty mediocre ones simply because that sort of shit is the alternative. I wish I never had kids because I would gladly walk away at this moment and try to set the world on fire to speed the inevitable. Instead I have to continue on the slim chance (exceedingly) that I can save the grand kids. While I saw how wrong Cole was I know the feeling too well. As describe by many here it ain’t the Clinton thats the problem.
@Villago Delenda Est: Trying for a joke.
David Koch
The bigger question is who would you support if Hillary didn’t run.
Gillibrand sure is gorgeous. Not only is she curvaceous, but she’s young, in her 40s, and therefore we wouldn’t have to deal with endless Boomer bullshit, refighting the 60s, yet again.
JPL
@Brian R.: You are right.. He’s to right on taxation but that had already happened. He’s doing his best to right the ship but can’t. Reagan did get immigration reform passed though.
Schlemizel
@Brian R.:
Seems like there have been several examples given on these pages over the last few years.
Schlemizel
Its interesting that the baggers lost every challenge so that the “moderate” goopers can now relax – and do all the shit the baggers want anyway. Greatest country on earth my ass
JPL
The one thing that I know, is that I trust Obama on foreign policy, Hillary not so much.
JPL
double post
but I might add that Obama is much better on foreign policy than Nixon or Reagan.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
I’m a tourist in WSHDC, POTUS walks up to me? I can’t think of anything I could say except “Holy fuck!”
jl
@Brian R.: Nixon did propose some liberal domestic policies, but I think from that unique and special Nixon angle. I read that Nixon held economics and yapping about how domestic economic and social policy meant this or that about Freedom and Liberty was a bunch of crap. Nixon had a kind of Straussian view of domestic policy: do whatever the hell worked to keep the yahoos under control and not too unhappy, while he got along with being a great statesmen at international realpolitik, the stuff historically great leaders were made of.
So, yes, Nixon started some domestic programs that are liberal compared to today, but he was no liberal, and didn’t particularly care about the values or vision embodied in different policies.
One quote does stick in memory from the tapes of discussion about health care policy (paraphrase): ‘So, you’re saying with this HMO thing, that we get people to pay more for less care. Sounds pretty good to me’.
JPL
@jl: Yup.. Reagan passed EMTALA which increased the cost but with lower care.
hmo’s didn’t really take hold until Reagan and expanded under Clinton. I think
Ash Can
And in other news, THIS is what we are truly up against (h/t commenters at LGF).
SatanicPanic
Shit man, I think Obama is by far the best president of my lifetime but I’m looking forward to someone new so we’ll get new “scandals” But that really is stupid. Not a great way to think about this stuff.
Brian R.
@JPL:
I think Obama and Reagan are the same on immigration, it’s the Congress with which they’ve had to deal that’s drastically different.
Reagan got amnesty through because he had the Dems in charge of both Houses and a not insignificant contingent of not-insane Republicans to go along with them.
Obama, meanwhile, has to deal with literally the most obstructionist opposition party in American history, one for whom nativism has a strong streak.
Brian R.
@Schlemizel:
Oh, OK. I’ll just go re-read the entire site’s history then. Thanks.
jl
@JPL: True, the big expansion of HMOs came later, but Nixon got the legal, regulatory and financial framework started when his original idea, or whatever original idea his flunkies brought to him, stalled in Congress.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: I’d see if he wanted to play a game of horse!
JPL
@SatanicPanic: After my cynical comments, I actually agree with you. He’s doing the best he can to hold together our democracy.
raven
@JPL: I knew you’d come around! :)
jl
@Brian R.:
” Oh, OK. I’ll just go re-read the entire site’s history then. Thanks. ”
Buck up. BJ commenting is no land for the lazy. Link us to some old TunchPix while your at it, please. Thanks in advance.
Aunt Kathy
@PsiFighter37: Yes.
Brian R.
@jl:
That’s an important distinction — Nixon passed liberal policies not because that’s what he really believed in, but because he thought it fit into the political calculus he needed for re-election in 1972. This is a guy who claimed that working for the OPA during WWII was his inspiration to become a politician, because he saw up close how evil the regulatory state of the New Deal was.
So, yeah, everything he did was for his own personal ends.
The EPA? His likely opponent at that point in time was Ed Muskie, the leading environmentalist in Congress.
OSHA? A desire to win over blue-collar workers who’d been told time and time again that a Republican would ruin their lives.
The Philadelphia Plan? Smart use of affirmative action policies as a way to drive a wedge between unions and African Americans.
This is a guy who had the Pentagon buy two years’ worth of toilet paper for the military in the run up to the ’72 election because he thought it would give the economy a slight jolt. It was always politics with him.
SatanicPanic
@JPL: I’d rather clean toilets than do his job. I’m amazed he can keep himself together. I would be drunk. Every day.
LT
” Just bring me some fresh material, please.”
YES x forever. Do Not Want More Clinton.
raven
@Brian R.: Back off buster,
JPL
@Brian R.: The point of my post was how far to the right the media and others have moved. I hated Nixon and Reagan but the nation thinks they are someone they weren’t.
Brian R.
@raven:
Back off what? The clear facts of American history?
SatanicPanic
@Ash Can: Sometimes I read stuff like that and think- can we just kill this guy? Like, just drone strike him? Does that make me a bad person?
JPL
@Ash Can: Since I’m on the topic of past Presidents, wasn’t it Reagan who did away with state hospitals?
Brian R.
@JPL:
Well, I’d certainly agree about the rightward shift of the media, but this is what you actually said:
I took that to mean that you *personally* feared HRC was to the right of Nixon and Obama was to the right of Reagan. And I’d still argue that’s a fair reading of what you wrote, if not what you intended.
Emma
@David Koch: well, let’s just choose the person with the nuclear codes for her looks. And no, they won’t stop. They’ll Clinton her in reverse.
David Koch
Will people stop calling Nixon a liberal. Just. Stop. You can’t be considered a liberal by any stretch of the imagination when you’re on tape saying the following:
Brian R.
@JPL: Yep.
We should print up bumper stickers:
“Love the Homeless Problem? Thank Reagan!”
raven
@Brian R.: Back off our pal, you don’t have enough time around here to be jumpin ugly on the JPL!
JPL
@raven: Actually it led to an interesting discussion. It’s not that the President is to the right of Reagan in his beliefs, but it where we are at.
David Koch
@Emma: my goodness, she’s a graduate of Darthmouth and UCLA. Have you heard her speak, she’s razor sharp. And yes, it didn’t hurt JFK that in addition to having the right values and intelligence, that women loved his good looks & charisma.
Mnemosyne
@JPL:
FWIW, I read your initial comment the same way Brian R. did and wondered if you’d started drinking early or something to be saying you thought Obama was to the right of St. Ronny. It’s not like we’ve never had firebaggers over here claiming that, or that Dick fucking Cheney was better on gay rights than Obama.
JPL
@raven: This is so off topic but what did you think of the last episode of Call the Midwife? I really think that’s the best series on tv. (sorry Benjamin Cumberbatch)
JPL
@Mnemosyne: haha.. I didn’t say st. ronny, the imaginary figure.
Patricia Kayden
“‘especially with my wingnut past and having to relive my wrongness over and over again.”
I doubt anyone cares that you used to be a Republican/Conservative. This is a great blog for politics, pets, healthcare, and entertainment (music, movies, tv). I am very much looking forward to November 2016 when Secretary Clinton wins. Cannot wait to see another Wingnut implosion — especially Karl Rove on Fox News.
Not fatigued at all. Let the Republicans bring it on. Mrs. Clinton and President Clinton look like they’re up to the fight.
Brian R.
@raven:
I’ve been reading this site since before the Iraq War, and commenting under a series of different handles.
Didn’t realize I needed to be voted into a secret society by the cool kids.
raven
@JPL: We went out Sunday and had to tape it. My bride has been so busy at night this week we only got through Mr Selfridge. We still have Midwife, Mad Men and Silicon Valley on the DVR!
Brian R.
@JPL:
Right. The media drift is so depressing. It’s like they’re still worried Spiro Agnew is going to yell at them.
raven
@Brian R.: You don’t have to do diddly shit.
JPL
@Brian R.: Recently there was a situation in Atlanta where an adult son off his meds, murdered his father and mother. A neighbor mentioned that it was so sad and questioned what happened to homes for the severely mentally ill. I said thank st. ronny.
raven
@JPL: And from Athens:
srv
YEEEEEEHAAAAAAW!
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
I don’t think I would be that compos. I mean, seriously, you’re visiting the Washington Monument and the Smithsonian and all, and the POTFUS strolls up to you, shakes your hand? My brain would go numb.
Laertes
These “{current pol} is to the {right/left} of {decades-ago pol}” observations are so silly, pointless, and faux-insightful that they should be a regular feature in Slate.
Early in 1941, the Germans were trying to move the front line toward the Dnieper. By 1942, Stalin was trying to move the line toward the Dnieper. Oh my God! Stalin was pro-German in 1942!
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: :)
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: :)
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: oops dupes
raven
@raven: bullshit WP has my Jody Hice post in jail.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: I’d want the hug.
SiubhanDuinne
@srv:
Ahhhh fuuuuuck. Death by any means.
This is the “pro-life” party we’re talking about, right?
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
S’aright, I liked it twice.
raven
@JPL: Dude is left handed, if you can force him right you have a shot.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Well, me too, but I’m not sure I’d be together enough to reach out both arms.
JPL
@raven: Turnout could be a factor because some people will not vote holding their nose. My candidate lost and now I don’t know who to vote for in the runoff. If Nunn were smart enough to use bullying as an issue, I’d vote for Kingston, cuz he thinks the poor need to sweep floors.
also.. GA is an open primary state and sometimes someone might vote against the party they support to get the right outcome. …
just sayin
SiubhanDuinne
O/T, Robert Gates is the new president of the Boy Scouts of America.
Discuss.
burnspbesq
Wow. The next open thread will be full of discussion of the US roster for the World Cup, which does not include Landon Donovan.
http://www.espnfc.com/news/story/_/id/1830254/landon-donovan-maurice-edu-left-world-cup-squad?cc=5901
El Caganer
@jnfr: And don’t forget the state and local races – look how much mischief the Republicans have gotten into in the states where they’re in charge.
Svensker
I’m sorry, but the problem is Hillary just isn’t very liberal. Certainly not on foreign policy where she’s almost a neocon, so far as I can see.
And then her instincts, at least based on those she chose to have around her in the past, are all wrong.
Yes I’ll vote for her but I ain’t gonna like it. I so wish the Dems had someone else coming up who could run and probably win. Don’t see it at the moment.
I’d love to see Bill and Hill waving benignly from the retirement home on the hill overlooking the broad sunlit plains of the New Day in Liberalism.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Gates didn’t seem to disagree with the President on ridding the military of dadt,.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: I just found this on the NYTimes
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
@JPL:
Right, it seems like a good pick to me. I haven’t been paying that much attention to BSA, didn’t even realize Gates was in the running to be president. But it would sure seem to change the national dynamic of the organization.
Aunt Kathy
Yep, my fatigue isn’t with the wingnuts, I don’t expect anything better from them no matter who the Dem nominee is. My fatigue is specifically Clinton-inspired. I never voted for Bill at any opportunity. I ID’d him as a psychopath during the ’92 primary debates. In ’96 I couldn’t believe that that people would put him in again. And now we have the psychopath’s wife. I’ll do my duty if she’s the last Dem standing, but if she wins, Bill gets to live in the White House again, acting like some sneaky consigliere. My inner Cartman is screaming GOD DA*#IT!!
On the domestic side, I’d love to see Elizabeth Warren run, but the globe is a terrifying place right now, and she never talks intl politics, so who knows her competencies there….
jl
@Laertes:
It’s a thousand words, give or take a few
I’ll be writing more in a day or two
I can make it saner if you like the style
I can change the end, and I want to be a contrary Slate writer
Contrary Slate writer!
LAC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: we can hope so. But do not hold your breath. This is what some on our left are engaged in: endless purity tests and circular firing squads. And is before the wingnuts wake up from their Cheetos induced comas to ingest the GOP’s latest talking points.
Frankensteinbeck
This insistence that it will be HIllary, must be Hillary, that there’s nobody else on the horizon, is nuts. Do you know why we don’t have a deep bench? Because our guys care about governing and aren’t just in it for the grift, so they’re not throwing their hats in the ring three years early. That’s a GOP thing. They want to milk the sweet, sweet nutcase conservative billionaire udder. It’s given them a VERY deep bench of useless unelectable losers. Give it a couple of years. Maybe a couple of years and a few months. Hillary will stop being the only name in the ring. All this complaining is so premature.
Emma
@David Koch: I didn’t notice your mentioning that when discussing her qualifications.
askew
One of my favorite parts of the last 2 election cycles was not having to re-litigate the Vietnam War. We did that in the 1992, 1996 and 2004 elections but we were finally putting it past us in 2008 when the media focused on today’s issues. Running Hillary is going to have us back re-litigating Vietnam again. The damn baby boomers in the media can’t get over it.
RSA
@yam: John is Sisyphus, and he’s in wingnut apostate hell.
raven
@askew: xin loi cowboy
talentless hack
@Rafer Janders Surely there’s some fresh blood somewhere?:
Yes, but for now, we need Hillary. Spahn and Sain and pray for rain, as the 50s Braves used to say. Let 2020 or 2024 take care of itself.
Josie
The only way, John, for you and all of us to avoid the same old craziness is for the Republicans to be crashed, absolutely annihilated. They must lose all their levers of power. The only Democrat who could possibly accomplish that is Hillary Clinton. She and her hubby have the money and connections to make it happen, so make up your mind to slog through the unpleasantness to get to the final victory. Then we may finally elect people who can right the ship.
Morzer
@Frankensteinbeck:
Because we haven’t campaigned very effectively at state level – so, we have fewer governors as potential candidates, plus, we have a fairly limited number of Senators who are both willing and able to be convincing candidates. The GOP bench may be obviously crazier and more corrupt – but that doesn’t mean ours is in great shape either.
JPL
@Aunt Kathy: Wow! Although I agree on some level, I do think Hillary is her own person and rule that way.
satby
I don’t care. I don’t, as long as the Dem wins. But a lot of tribalistic R women who wouldn’t vote for a Dem normally will also crawl over broken glass to see a woman elected in their lifetimes. The Repukes will smear anyone and everyone, so we may as well front them with a second person in a row to be the “first ever” in the Presidency.
And I knew Obama from Chicago, he’s a great and decent guy; too decent ad moderate I thought in 2008, so I also flipped a coin between him and Clinton for the primary. Because I thought it would be good to have someone with a few scores to settle too.
Helen
@JPL: He definitely was the one who took my SS survivor benefits away. I was 19 and in college and got a WHOPPING $116 a month because my mother died when I was 12. Well, St. Ronnie put an end to my mooching, welfare queen, Cadillac driving ways, but quick.
SiubhanDuinne
@Aunt Kathy:
Psychopath, really? Could you please provide a few specifics?
askew
@Frankensteinbeck:
We have a deep bench right now. The problem is the Democrats get almost no face time on national news shows and the little time we do get is sucked up by the Clinton speculation. Here’s a short list of potential nominees most of whom would be 100% better than Hillary as our nominee:
1. Maryland Gov. O’Malley
2. Massachusetts Gov. Patrick
3. NY Gov. Cuomo
4. NY Sen. Kristen Gilibrand
5. MO Sen. Claire McCaskill
6. MN Sen. Amy Klobuchar
7. CO Gov. Hickenlooper
8. CT Gov. Malloy
These are all seasoned politicians who would be able to attract enough money and attention to make a run at the 2016 nomination.
jl
@RSA:
No, Cole is Prometheus chained to a rock. David Gregory, with a retinue of GOP Harpies, comes by every day to eat out Cole’s liver, but this makes Cole sad because he wants to eat out his own liver in repentance for his sins back in the day when he was the one demanding people make precious sacrifices to the gods. Hills-acles comes by and offers to free Cole, but she is chased by the Furies, which…. well… it is complicated.
askew
@Josie:
That’s the same bullshit that Hillary supporters to pushing all the way up until she finally conceded the nomination to Obama. And then they claimed he’d never win against such a popular politician like McCain. Obama kicked McCain’s ass. Any nominee we have is going to have the best organization and political minds behind them (unless Hillary runs because she is stuck in the 1990s and using Bill’s old out-of-touch consultants) and we’ll kick the Republicans’ asses again.
Roger Moore
@talentless hack:
Actually, it was the 1948 Braves; Sain was traded to the Yankees for Lew Burdette in the middle of the 1951 season. It wasn’t really true, either. Both Bill Voiselle and Vern Bickford had better ERAs than Spahn that season, and Bickford had the best winning percentage of their regular starters.
Just as well, because the “it’s gotta be Hillary” isn’t really true, either. The Democrats have plenty of potential candidates, like O’Malley, Hickenlooper, Gillibrand, Warren, etc. Those potential candidates aren’t running off their mouths about how much they want to run, but they’d start to come out of the woodwork if Hillary were to declare she wasn’t going to run. It’s interesting, because the Democrats are behaving exactly the way we claim the Republicans always do- getting ready to hand the nomination to the next candidate in line- while the Republicans are behaving as if their field is wide open.
raven
@askew: What a shock. Campaigns say shit that is in the best interest of their candidate.
wasabi gasp
Snap out of it. Bring on John Forester de Rothschild Cole.
gogol's wife
@askew:
Sorry about Malloy, but I don’t think he can win the presidency. I like him, but I just don’t see it happening. Maybe Chris Murphy, though!
kindness
Here’s the thing. Hillary would win hands down in 16. I can’t say that if anyone else steps to the plate. And after having lived through the 8 worst years of a presidency in dubya I’ve ever known and that includes Nixon & Reagan, knowing that the Repub bench is now even worse…I will happily love me some Hillary.
JPL
@Helen: Now they are trying to divide those who are retired against those who get Social Security Disability and who are the most worthy. The Koch brothers laugh at our expense.
David Koch
Obama mocks “Operation American Spring” – “Oh my gosh, it’s like the best day of my life”
askew
@raven:
I am not talking about campaigns. I am talking about the deluded Hillary supporters who have been saying since 2007 that she was the only electable one. It was nonsense then and it is nonsense now.
Though there were plenty of Clinton campaign surrogates who took great delight in claiming that only their candidate was electable while tearing down the other nominees. Something that none of the other Democratic campaigns did by the way. The Clintons in the end did more to hurt Obama in the general than McCain did.
Helen
@talentless hack: This. I am not a super Hillary fan either, but we need a placeholder who will continue to fix the damage of GWB until the voting demographics are stronger. If the polls are correct, and Hillary is by far the frontrunner, until the demographics kick in for sure, it is too much of a risk to run a Gillibrand, or a Warren.
That being said, I will be 55 when the next President is sworn in. Really, how much longer do I have to wait for the government I want and accept the lesser of two evils?
askew
@gogol’s wife:
It’s way too early to tell. You need to let the primary play out. Once the candidates get on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire for 4-5 months, they’ll all be ready to go. The difference between Obama in 2007 and in 2008 was night and day. He was significantly improved. That’s why we need a vigorous primary. Hillary is a mediocre politician who is going to need to sharpen her game against Democrats before we get to the general election. A coronation is a dumb move on our parts.
JPL
@David Koch: So as a mom with special white house m and m’s, do you allow your child to consume them? hmmmm… If you don’t will the children grow up to be republicans?
raven
@JPL: They’ll be keepin them M&M’s.
jl
@raven: Then they have more discipline than I do. .I guess I’d save the last one, and rattle it around inside the box to impress people.
Craig
I wish we could nominate the former Senator and Secretary of State, without nominating the former First Lady. (Mostly for the ugliness of political dynasties. Here in Georgia, we have Jason Carter running for governor and Michelle Nunn running for the Senate, on the basis of…what, exactly, beyond their last names?) But they come as a team, or not at all. And after her tenure at State, and as the 90s recede into the mists of time, the incremental crazy she is likely to bring out above, well, anyone on the Democratic ticket, is modest.
She’ll be nominated in a walk, and win if the economy isn’t in a recession. (President Jeb! otherwise.)
raven
@Craig: You’re from here and you have to ask “on the basis of what”? Goddamn man, they don’t stand much of a chance. Without some kind of name recognition they’d have zero.
ruemara
Isn’t that nice? You get to be fatigued about propaganda and bullshit. Those of us who are fatigued about a devastated economy, worried about an increasingly evil electorate who could gladly bring back slavery, Jim Crow & out right attacks on gays, immigrants and anyone not like them-we’d like you to stuff your fatigue down your gullet and swallow. I can’t survive losses in this upcoming election. I can’t survive a wingnut Senate and House. For me to sit there and whine and pule about Hillary Clinton, yeah, I ain’t that comfortable. It’s your blog, so it’s your party, but that’s about how your complaints stack up.
Death Panel Truck
@JPL: “We’re going to [put] more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family — let people like Pat Moynihan … believe in all that crap. But I don’t believe in it. Work, work — throw ’em off the rolls. That’s the key. … I have the greatest affection for them [blacks], but I know they’re not going to make it for 500 years. They aren’t. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they’re dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don’t live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.” –Richard Nixon, May 13, 1971
Hillary Clinton is to the right of that. Uh-huh.
Moron.
RSA
@jl:
I admit, that is better.
Suzanne
God. I have such a different perspective than so many of y’all. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived in a shifty red state for so long, and I’ve seen so many good people get resoundingly beaten by really shitty people, at every level, for my entire politically-aware life, that I will be absolutely thrilled to vote for a Democrat who has good odds to win. I literally cried on election night 2008, because it was historic, yes, but also because for once i wasn’t on the losing side that night.
I’d prefer Franken or Sanders or Warren, yeah. But I prefer winning to not-winning, and it seems that Hillary, who was a great Secretary of State, has the best chance of winning due to her qualifications. So….that’s an easy decision for me. So many of y’all are actually talking about what you WANT. I can’t imagine thinking politically in those terms.
Suzanne
@ruemara: THIS. So very this.
jl
@ruemara:
@Suzanne:
I agree. It is silly to worry about it anyway, since it is out of our control. The primaries will decide, and we are each one person with one vote and only so much time and money to support a candidate we prefer in our state primary.
Just hope we get a good candidate with better policies and attitude than the GOP will produce, who can win elections, and go GOTV and vote and hope for the best. Tune all the silly media noise out, or learn to mock it and enjoy it as the nonsense it is; that stuff is total piffle compared to the important issues we need to deal with, but are not because of the dysfunctional politics in this country (mostly these days, to the shame of my people, fueled by scared bitter old white bigots, who are proud of bigotry of every species and all descriptions).
Keith G
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So you are saying he has been on the case for seven years and still there are management issues that escaped his notice?
Two years ago there was a scorching IG report about data for “improved” service not adding up.
I am sure he does, as we all do. Yet this is on his watch and it’s been going on for quite a while.
Ahhh you thought that I meant he should talk with the patients who are lucky enough to have gotten service. I meant that he should meet with employees of the VA and share concerns and impress the need for improvement for those who are being under-served. Someone needs to get involved since Eric Shinseki seems to be rather oblivious to what’s been going on in his Department.
Douchebaggery? Hardly. But I will cop to it if it makes you feel better.
Aunt Kathy
@SiubhanDuinne: Well, yeah, I guess I could walk that back just a little bit and say “narcisstic with psychopathic tendencies.” Mostly that’s just the usual personality requirements for any politician, but he just has it all ten fold. So much so that he stinks of it. I just remember seeing the line-up of the Dem candidates at the time, maybe a NH debate, and wanting so much to vote Democatic but thinking, “Gosh, there is something seriously WRONG with that guy.” “Ma’am I feel your pain?” Come ooonnnnnn.
I mean it’s over now, and he’s gone, so who cares, right, except it’s possible that he’s not gone, cuz with Hill & Bill it’s 2 for the price of one.
And if you go with the general idea that best politicians, CEOs, etc are good at what they do because of their psychopathic tendencies (minus the violence), then, yeah, that’s Bill.
http://psychcentral.com/news/2006/07/03/improving-the-definition-of-%E2%80%98psychopath%E2%80%99/64.html
Keith G
@Helen: My admiration for a brilliant, yet compact summation of a very important idea.
We need better, but until better appears….
Joe Bauers
I’ve got Republican fatigue. I wish so very badly that we lived in a world in which it was not necessary to fight relentless, indefatigable crazy people tooth and nail just to keep them from driving us over a cliff right now. And if we succeed, it will still be necessary to fight them in five minutes, and in ten minutes, and at every point into the indefinite future because they’re never going to stop trying to drive us over the cliff. They literally will not stop tugging at the wheel until the car has crashed at the bottom of the canyon, and even then they’ll be jumping up and down on the wreckage, trying to drive it still further down, because they are crazy.
It’s exhausting to sane people, but they don’t seem to experience exhaustion. Success and failure alike seem to energize them equally.
Frolicking Gadfly
The Gadfly understands and empathizes with your weary and pain Mr. Cole. However, The Gadfly feels that the self sacrifice will be paid off in gold come that beautiful, sunny January 20, 2017 day when Hillary Clinton takes the podium and utters the words – “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” And all across the land the sound of ultra-loud champagne corks popping, which in reality are the exploding cranial cavities of wingnuts from sea to shining sea, signify the bringing forth of comfort to the afflicted and affliction to the comforted.
LT
Lest We Forget: Hillary Clinton was a pillar of strength to the Bush/Cheney administration’s foreign policy throughout its corrupted 8 year run.
She supported the Big Lie War in 2003. She continues to defend that decision to this day.
That fact (alone) renders her unfit for the presidency.
Think of it in these terms: if you support Hillary Clinton in 2016, you also endorse the Bush/Cheney treason that engineered the USA into waging that war. She was an instrumental co-conspirator in unleashing that crime against humanity, and there’s not enough soft soap on the planet that can absolve her of that crime.
mclaren
Yeah, I hear ya, Cole. But it’s very unlikely that we’re going to have another bout of internal civil war over Hillary’s 2016 run the way we did back in 2008.
First, the Tea Party didn’t control the House in 2008. We actually thought there was a fucking chance to change things. And Hillary was the same-old same-old. But more than that, lunatics like Paul Ryan and Romney hadn’t run back in 2008, quoting Ayn Rand gibberish and hawking fiscal snake oil.
Most of all, the fuckin’ economy hadn’t collapsed in the worst goddamn depression since 1929.
Things are so bad now, Cole, that even the most vociferous critics of Hllary will vote for her. Never doubt: I may hammer away at Hills for her corruption and her self-dealing and her love of the demented national security state and endless unwinnable foreign wars…but I *W*I*L*L* vote for her.
No question. No doubt. Not even a second thought.
When Hillary runs in 2016, I will pull the lever for her. Because what the fuck is the alternative?
Some lunatic babbling gibberish from Francisco D’Anconia in an Ayn Rand novel? Holy fuck.
At this point, the Democrats could run a dead armadillo squashed by an 18-wheeler and I’d vote for it, because the only other choice is a political party so batshit insane that an audience of ’em applauded people who proposed letting patients without health insurance die screaming in agony.
That isn’t politics anymore, that’s sharpening a stake at both ends. That’s Lord of the Flies.
Helen
@Keith G: Thank you.
@LT: Assuming you are not a troll, please go see me at 166. Stop the purity shit. Also please go see TBogg on this
He is much more articulate than me.
mclaren
@LT:
Sure, right, I hear ya — but we live in the real fuckin’ world, boy-o. If you don’t vote for Hillary, what’s the alternative?
Either you don’t vote at all (which is effectively a vote for the fringe lunatic Repulican candidate) or you vote for whatever Vlad the Impaler character the Republicans dredge up out of their bottomless chum bucket in 2016.
No thank you.
Hillary is unfit for the presidency, but I’ll vote for her — because at least she’s not gonna appoint a horse as a senator.
mclaren
@Joe Bauers:
Boy oh boy, does that ever resonate.
It puts me in mind of an obscure Harlan Ellison story from the 1970s. Some future America where this rebel is fighting Klansmen who have taken over the country, and he keeps shooting them down and blowing them up with grenades, and they keep on coming.
In the end, the rebels gets overwhelmed and the narrator of the story dies, thinking: The trouble is, there are just too many of them. There were always just too many of them.
It’s like the goddamn Chinese human wave attacks at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea in 1950. You shoot them down and they keep coming. You run out of bullets and kill them with your bayonet and they keep coming. They break your bayonet and you have to club them to death with your rifle butt.
And they still keep coming.
Helen
@mclaren: Caligula reference YAY!! Who would think we would get to the point in American politics where we would reference Caligula. Realistically. TEN points to you!
mclaren
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think we actually do have a deep bench. It’s just that the villagers refuse to take the Democratic politicians who are worth a shit seriously.
Example: Barney Frank is an incredible politician and a superb policy guy. He’d make a fabulous presidential or vice presidential candidate.
Elizabeth Warren. Another great policy person and superb candidate. You may despise her foreign policy leanings, but on domestic policy, she’s outstanding.
Russ Feingold. World-class, one of the few to vote against the Iraq War, a persistent critic of the phony War on Terror.
Representative Alan Grayson, who has a habit of giving Repubs the whole enchilada right up the poop chute. “The Republican health plan is that if you get sick, you should die quickly.”
Sounds like a pretty damn deep bench to me.
Especially compared to the wack jobs and loons the Republicans are dredging up out of their policy cesspool: Newt Gingrich? Sam Brownback? Paul Ryan? Senator Ted Cruz?
Ted fucking Cruz???!?!?!???
That guy is literally “Senator Blutarsky” from the Animal House movie.
Higgs Boson's Mate
“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold. I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy.”
– Hillary Clinton
March 6, 2008
Helen
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Can you tell us why you posted that? I do not see the relevance to the upcoming election.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Helen:
Clinton stated that she and McCain were ready to be CinC but, implied that Obama might not be. She could easily have tooted her own horn without endorsing a fucking Republican or dissing a fellow Democrat.
ETA: The relevance to the upcoming election election is that her statement demonstrates that she has no character and little party loyalty. That she is not on the stump in support of Democrats running in the mid-term bears out that last. She is once again expecting a coronation.
LAC
@ruemara: seriously , could you imagine this dude in the civil rights era? That level of “fatigue” and we would still be drinking out of the colored fountains.
Sadly we end the thread with mclaren’s word salad. So there is real fatigue.
Helen
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Please go to me at 186 and 166. And please read TBogg.
This is fight to the death. The dem party are full of pussies. But they are far better tan the alternative.
LT
@mclaren: Boyo? I’m nearing the older-than-dirt stage. Which means I’m familiar with your argument.
Hillary Clinton endorsed the Bush/Cheney war, and remains unrepentant of her vote.
What else does any democratic voter need to know in order to disenthrall them of an H.C. candidacy?
Much less a decent person?
Any democrat that turns a blind eye to HC’s disastrous decision making in 2002-2003 is part of the problem.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Helen:
I’ve knocked on doors and/or worked the phones for Democrats in every election since 1968. A few of our candidates were good, one or two were great and more than I’d care to count stank on ice. It didn’t matter – until now. I will not work for a lying, triangulating, hawkish, fucking Clinton. My party has failed me. It has failed me by not having the strategic sense to put every dime it had into state elections and thereby leaving us with the choice of nominating a superannuated Boomer or an unknown. Fuck them. I’m old and tired and I’m sick to death of having to hold my nose as I vote. The “But a Republican would be worse argument,” has, to me, become a means for our party’s leadership to avoid doing its job.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: there have been a couple of people in these threads who keep trotting out the “Hillary won’t waste time talking to Republicans!” line, because I guess the separation of powers is going to be suspended, and I keep thinking about how she and McCain kept fluffing each other as her primary candidacy faded. I’ve always thought that had she won the nomination, she– with Bubba’s encouragement, in his endless quest to finally seduce David Broder, the last bastion of disapproval– would have fallen for all of McCain’s silly stunts, the campaign suspension and some silliness about a series of town hall debates, then lost to a Palin-less McCain.
@mclaren: Feingold? Grayson? As presidential candidates? I always knew you were goofy, but this suggests some new medication that is having odd side effects.
Helen
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I agree with everything you say.
Here’s my out. My mom was born raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland. As her daughter I am an Irish citizen. 6 more years and I am retiring there.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Helen:
So you’re going to jump out of the frying pan and into the Eire? Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I don’t blame you one little bit. Hang in there until the day and best of luck with your move.
Mnemosyne
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Dude. It’s still two and a half years until the 2016 elections. As others have pointed out, at this point in the 2008 cycle, Obama was on no one’s list of candidates, because he had been in the Senate for less than a year.
Relax. It’s not going to be Hillary.
ETA: At this point in 2006, Hillary was inevitable. I think we all know how that turned out.
AxelFoley
@Brian R.:
Thank you. The fact that some on the left can even formulate the thought, much less say or type, that Obama is to the right of ANY Republican is downright fucking stupid.
Mnemosyne
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Another thought: in 1990, Bill Clinton was that small-state governor who gave a ridiculously long, boring speech at the 1988 convention. Two years later, he was president.
That’s why trying to pick the 2016 candidate in 2014 is a mug’s game.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Mnemosyne:
Thank you, Mnemosyne. Sometimes I crawl so far up my own asshole that I think that all is darkness.
micromeme
just enjoy the fact that she’ll be driving them crazy…if its all we get then its still good.
— but if I think of bush, clinton, bush, obama, clinton… then after all clinton1 and obama were actually new blood at the time. so its only one rerun the democrats have brought us. The democrats are going to try for the first woman in office– thats worth a lot right there, especially to my daughters…
Barry
@Brian R.: “The Nixon comparison wasn’t what struck me as insane — he was very much a continuation of the Great Society in terms of domestic legislation (in addition to what you named there, he also made food stamps a massive program, instituted the first-ever peacetime wage and price controls for a while, launched OSHA and proposed a negative income tax that would’ve meant direct cash payments to the poor).”
Note that a lot of that was passed by Congress with veto-proof supermajorities, and much was signed because Nixon wanted a free hand in war.
Bobby Thomson
@Brian R.:
Amen. At least with Nixon, who was constrained by a much more liberal Congress, there is an argument. But people who think Reagan was some kind of leftie because marginal tax rates were higher obviously didn’t live through the 1980s.
Bobby Thomson
@Helen:
That was your first mistake.
Bobby Thomson
@askew: If you think Cuomo and McCaskill would be better than Clinton you need to take a day of sobriety.
Bobby Thomson
@Brian R.:
You read it that way because that’s clearly what (s)he wrote before backpedaling.
Paul in KY
@Litlebritdifrnt: They don’t love you when you are on active duty either. In fact, they try to get you killed to advance their political agenda.
Paul in KY
@Aunt Kathy: You were a dipshit for not voting for Pres. Clinton in 92/96.
Paul in KY
@askew: VP Biden should be on your list.
Paul in KY
@Frolicking Gadfly: That will/would be a great day!
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: He did give a terrible speech in 1988.
Tim C.
So… basically a Clinton campaign is Roadhouse?
Raoul
JC- you need to transfer your emotions a la Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worryinhg and Love the Bomb. What I mean by this- instead of engaging in apoplectic fits and believe me we all understand, you need to look at the other side and enjoy their distortions and contortions. You will feel much better.
Aunt Kathy
@Paul in KY: Ha! You just made my day! And apparently this month is supposed to be the 25th anniversary of LOL? So,
http://youtu.be/uK_ZUlNZXxQ