“This isn’t magic. We know how to do this… “
I do so love my Senator Warren — not least when she’s pushing back on Matthews’ manic-depressive parroting of Repub lies. Still assume she means it when she says she’s not running for president, but if she keeps this up, she’s absolutely going to push the Democrats who do run towards the people and away from the Point-Zero-One Percenters!
***********
Apart from the battle, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?
tybee
i’d vote for her. but generally, my vote is the kiss of death.
raven
He’s such a punk.
Amir Khalid
Why does Chris Matthews tend to shout his questions? Does he think that shouting makes him sound passionate or serious? Or is he just hard of hearing?
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid: As far as I can tell, he thinks it makes him look like a tough interviewer.
OzarkHillbilly
I can’t stand to listen to him. Everything is a shoutfest.
Chris
@tybee:
The only reason I don’t want her to be president is that she’s been so effective as a voice for the left, that I honestly would rather prefer to see her continuing in that role and pressuring more “mainstream” politicians from that direction, than making the necessary compromises that happen when you have to become the President of the entire nation.
I also wouldn’t mind a lot more like her, and frankly to the left of her, but that’s another story.
Keith G
In occasions such as this, I do wish that Senator Warren would be a little bit less professorial.
The punchline of her college loan story was, “We had 58 votes, we had 58 votes, we had 58 votes. That is what the Democrats are doing for college students. We had 58 votes and Republicans stopped Democracy”.
Put down the dependent clauses and pick up the ball peen hammers.
Note, apparently WordPress has been eating my comments. I switched computers so I hope this isn’t part of a 3 comment repeat post. If so, please forgive.
JPL
@Keith G: This.
OzarkHillbilly
Congress prepares to renew $40bn bill terrorism insurance law
The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act has never covered a single company from terrorism costs and has earned $40bn in revenue for insurance companies. But Congress is too afraid to end it
In a thread about E Warren, this isn’t even off topic.
Schlemizel
@OzarkHillbilly:
We should not end such a valuable program! What we ought to do is make it a federal insurance program. That $40B would have gone into the general fund and we would not have to have hired a single person to staff the organization administering it.
No sense the US shouldn’t profit from the scam.
Schlemizel
Screaming Tweetie is still miffed he was not chosen as Clinton’s Press Secretary. He paid Bill back by carrying every drop of water for the Clinton Cock Hunters Club but that sweet deal dried up years ago.
He is a bit open in his personal feelings. When Boy Blunder flew to the AC carrier & strutted around playing dress up fighter pilot Tweets admitted he was sexually turned on.
His screaming is a substitute for passion and a way to hide his tender personality. It also covers for his woeful lack of preparation for interviews.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemizel: You mean, “No sense the uber-elite of the US shouldn’t profit from the scam.”
max
Still assume she means it when she says she’s not running for president
What we need to do here is to clone her. Four or five times.
max
[‘Orphan Warren.’]
Schlemizel
@OzarkHillbilly:
No, I was actually thinking that the government collect the premiums & profit. Take it away from the 1%ers. You know the gov is going to be on the hook for most of the damage anyway if there really were another 9/11 here. Why not get some of the income? FEMA can handle the payouts if needed.
WereBear
Let Warren do what she does best. She is a great voice of sense and economic fair play. Presidentin’ might not be her thing.
I hope to wrap up the Way of Cats fundraiser soon. I’m so close!
If anyone wants to gaze upon some cuteness in exchange, I can do that.
max
what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?
In Chaos, Iraq’s Kurds See a Chance to Gain Ground:
max
[‘Keep going guys.’]
NotMax
@Schlemizel
Any episode of Hardball can be distilled down thus:
The trouble with [insert politician’s name here] is that he isn’t Chris Matthews.
Speaking of MSNBC, was doing some channel surfing recently during yet another extended visit from my by now bosom buddy Insomnia, and happened upon a program which airs in the morning hours on the East.
The decision to give an hour of airtime to someone (didn’t catch the name) who looks, sounds and speaks as if he was 12 years old and is clearly pathetically, woefully out of his depth when it comes to content and context is beyond bizarre. Was previously unaware of this sad excuse for news-oriented programming.
Before eagerly moving on to peruse other channels, the analogy which came to mind was that of someone hiring Gary Coleman to play Hamlet.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemizel:
Now you see? That’s where you went wrong, you were thinking. Bad Schlemizel, Bad. Don’t you know that gov’t only exists to help the .1%?
dmsilev
Tweet of the day:
That’s former Congressman and child-support-deadbeat Joe Walsh, trying to understand why all of sudden he’s been cut off from his radio show.
Glad to see that the GOP minority outreach program is proceeding on schedule.
rda909
@WereBear: Is there any job where that “great voice” will be heard more than as President?!? Every time I see Senator Warren posts at “progressive” blogs, the comments quickly fill with “she should stay in the Senate. That’s the best place for her” and so on. This makes no sense whatsoever (unless someone is a Hillary-backer). I love Gov O’Malley on the issues and in interview format, but he’s not that great at public speaking. Hillary makes my skin crawl with her insincere, robotic talking point speaking, and of course her horrible voting record in the Senate and her history as a DLC leader.
Senator Warren is by far the best choice to be the next President. She’s proven to be a good legislator who can be pragmatic, yet still push the pendulum to the left. Out of all the names being discussed so far, she’s easily the best a firing up crowds in her speeches. “Presidentin” is EXACTLY what she should be doing.
I wish she would’ve pointed out to that maroon in the clip though how much Democrats, and even just recently President Obama, have already done for increasing infrastructure spending already, which has been significant since President Obama was sworn in. Oh well, next time.
WereBear
In a niche where it is really really really hard to fail, he’s managing.
And I thought he was a no-talent!
WereBear
I think there is a case to be made that her talents would not work as well on such a plane.
There’s more to being President that crafting rallying cries and useful analogies. There’s the cracking together of legislator’s heads like coconuts. There’s choosing an enormous staff. There’s coming up with answers to foreign policy puzzles. And so much more.
But the really important qualifier is a desire to take on all that, knowing it is close-ended and thankless and massively life-disrupting. She doesn’t seem to have that, at least right now.
Besides, I don’t believe in the Great Man theory of history. I don’t think ONE PERSON can make a difference unless they have the help of a lot of other people. Everyone can serve. And should.
If ONE PERSON was enough, President Obama would be that person. And we see the stuff he puts up with.
MomSense
@rda909:
Elizabelle
Too funny.
Looking at the “Trending” line at top of Washington Post site just now.
One of these items is not like the others.
WereBear
@Elizabelle: Aren’t they all concepts that no longer fit into their ecological niche?
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: This.
Baud
This.
WereBear
And on a personal note, I’m wondering when I can get out of this cosmic Skinner box designed to test my endurance. After three weeks of varying water pressure, and edits which were then retracted, the road in front of our house is torn apart.
The good news is that I can park at work and walk back and forth, and it’s sumer. The bad news is that I’m dealing with a health issue and lugging groceries and laundry any distance, much less up what is now five flights of stairs one way, is not helping. Not a bit.
I just love the way the medical system goes, “This could be serious, you need to get it checked out. Here’s a specialist appointment, two and a half months hence.”
OzarkHillbilly
Injured explorer rescued from Germany’s deepest cave after 12 days
The logistics of the rescue mission, involving 728 people from five countries and estimated to have cost several million euros, has captured the imagination of the German public since climbers arrived at the site of the accident last Friday.
On Sunday 8 June, Westhauser was injured by rockfall at a depth of about 950 metres and a distance of four miles (6.5km) from the cave entrance.
Been a part of a few cave rescues and they are all very complex, labor intensive, problem solving nightmares. But 728 people???? That is insane!
Also 950 meters, very impressive feat, probably involving at least a hundred miles of rope. Wish I could have been there just to witness the rigging.
raven
@WereBear: Oh boy, I bet my neighbors are going to be thrilled when they dig a 100 yard trench 15 feet down to redo the sewer on our street!
WereBear
@raven: They will think things about you, I can tell ya :)
And I don’t mind roads being fixed… roads NOT being fixed is far more of a problem. It’s just the timing of this, coming after a series of other Freakin’ Challenges, is wearing me down like a first grader’s eraser.
raven
@WereBear: They probably won’t be able to pin it on me directly. . .maybe.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: Yay for kitty bonding! So sweet.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: It took our youngest a while, because he was rescued at 3 weeks and had literally never seen a kitten before.
We would tell him “you were once that young and clueless” and he would not believe us.
But now they are playing more and more. By the time Mithrandir really needs the play, Tristan will be ready to dish it out.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: I’m sorry, WereBear. Beyond maddening!
Red Apple Smokes
You can add another member to the “let’s clone Senator Warren” faction. This exchange was was great, not letting Matthews steamroll her, while staying calm takes some talent . Other than the obvious answer of “unlimited corporate cash”, why isn’t every Democrat north of the Mason/Dixon striking this tone? With Warren already safely in the senate, why not see if we can mold more up and comers in her image?
Baud
MSNBC needs to fire their whole tech team. Their website sucks, the video AL posted wouldn’t load for me, and they launched an iphone app in November 2013 and still don’t have an Android version because, you know, who uses Android, right?
Betty
Annie, do you mean Democrats will have a choice beyond Hillary? Thought I was being told otherwise.
Belafon
Unless the media does what they have done with Obama: Not put her on camera except for when they have to.
gene108
@rda909:
Playing Devil’s Advocate:
But what about Dronez? Or NSA wiretapping?
There’s a huge national security state apparatus that a President is in charge of which is loathed by liberals.
In the Senate, with being on the Banking Committee, she can focus on banking regulations and pushing for change on domestic priorities, without getting bogged down in the Executive power stuff liberals loathe.
Also, if a President is going to enact a liberal agenda, they need die hard liberals in the Senate and House to get their agenda passed. I know Massachusetts has good odds of electing another liberal to the Senate, but I do not think Democratic machine pols from Massachusetts will necessarily be inherently willing to be as visibly liberal as Warren or worse yet a bad Dem campaigner loses to a Republican.
I think Warren would fire up the base more than any other candidate, but like President Obama after January 21, 2009, the enthusiasm brought to the Office can get mired in the grinding reality of Republican obstruction and a media looking to knock her down a peg by parroting Republican talking points.
Very broadly generalizing, liberals, from what I saw of Obama’s early first term, are champing at the bit to destroy Reagan’s legacy in one fell swoop and return to some “golden era”, where everyone belonged to a union, tax rates on the rich were high and what ever other nostalgia there was about post-WW2 America. Reagan’s brand of conservatism began in the 1950’s and 1960’s, with the John Birch Society and Buckley putting an “intellectual” shine on bigotry and greed and got a shot in the arm with white backlash to civil rights – for both blacks and women – and a concurrent rise in crime and drug use that got the causation-correlation about Great Society programs being ineffectual wrong.
The backlash to Reagan will not happen overnight and many liberals, who wish Obama could be more liberal, will be equally disappointed in President Warren not being able to get more done to jail banksters, raise taxes, etc.
And if the support for the face of modern Democratic liberal populism goes down, as President, to the gridlock and nastiness of Washington, DC politics and media, what then for the liberal populist resurgence we’re seeing? If Warren could not get it done, who else will be willing to go hard left?
There’s a downside risk to her being President and ending her first term with intractable problems, like President Carter had to deal with.
Baud
Some good news.
amk
@WereBear:
good one.
Emma
@Chris: This. This. We need a voice, a loud voice who is not scared by the likes of Matthews (Jesus, what a jacka_ss), who can carry the banner and build a power base in the Senate. As a president she would be viewed differently, and would have to act differently.
D58826
@OzarkHillbilly: What I don’t like is he asks a knowledgably guest a good question and then doesn’t shut up and let the guest answer the question.
Lurking Canadian
@gene108: this. Senator Warren can be awesome. President Warren would just be thwarted by Congress at every turn, with David Gregory wondering why she didn’t lead by cutting taxes and entitlements.
The lesson of the last five years is that whereas it’s hard to get things done in Congress, it’s really, really easy to prevent anything from getting done in Congress. Even Bernie Firebrand Sanders voted against letting Obama close Gitmo.
If Senator Warren has three terms to remake the entire Democratic Party in her image, then it would make sense for her to run for the big job. Of course, she’d be crowding ninety by then.
Alexandra
According to PPP, Elizabeth Warren polls between 6-11% in Democratic primary polls… and in early national matchups would start about ten points behind Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, of all people. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and even Mitt Romney would handily beat her in a national election.
Forget it.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Co-signed. Not only does the new site suck from a tech standpoint, the design and UX suck donkey dongs too. If it’s any consolation, the iOS app sucks anyway, so you’re not missing a thing on Android except suckage on a different platform.
Randy P
@Alexandra: You do realize that there’s a campaign phase of elections, right?
J R in WV
We have a real fight, against wealth and power, against the establishment and judges, against everyone that has been brainwashed by Faux Noise.
There are people in power (Republicans mostly, but plenty of folks who claim to be Dems) who want us to be either a monarchy, feudal in nature and bound to a lord in reality, or to be a National Socialist country in the German Nazi sense, hung from a meathook if you don’t do as you are told.
These are who our enemies are. Just like back in 1940. Or back in the Golden Age of Frick, Rockefeller, Gould, the billionaires who owned the railroads, big steel, and the banks, and, oh yes, Congress and the judiciary and the presidency.
But we eventually beat them back then. Although owning the media today does seem to make a diff, do it not?
WereBear
It would if anyone still cared. When I was a child, everyone watched “the news” and trusted Walter Cronkite. That’s slowly being eroded by the sheer stupidity of our media.
WaterGirl
@raven: Aren’t you the optimist this morning! :-)
Cervantes
@Lurking Canadian:
Are you referring to the vote in 2009? If so, do you know why Sanders voted the way he did?
WaterGirl
@Cervantes: I don’t.
Schlemizel
@raven:
Next summer the county is ripping up the road in front of our place and lowering and widening the road. They are taking our best flower beds and 2 great cherry trees (they did cut us a check for same). But all summer our road will be dirt/mud and for a period of a few weeks we will be unable to drive to our house. We’ll park a couple blocks away & walk, which I don’t mind except for hauling groceries in the heat. Probably have to bring the cooler.
Alexandra
@Randy P:
You think Elizabeth Warren is a gifted campaigner and fundraiser with a broad appeal to the mass of the American electorate across battleground states?
I don’t.
rda909
@gene108: How is this different for anyone else? The national news owners will seek to destroy any Democrat. Senator Warren is the smartest out there and quickest learner, and like President Obama does, will figure out ways around this. Even given this media dynamic, President Obama has across the board on issue after issue, led an incredible liberal transformation of America, and Senator Warren is the perfect person to take the baton from him and carry on the momentum. It’s worth dealing with the problems you mentioned to continue making this progress.
the Conster
If we’ve learned anything, and the point Warren was making to Matthews who seemed to be either oblivious or willfully ignorant, is that the House is where everything progressive goes to die. We need to get the House back. As long as the fucktards control the House, we could have 100 Warrens in the Senate and as president, and not one decent piece of legislation would come out of that place.
rda909
@Alexandra: So why is Lundergan-Grimes having Senator Warren campaign for her in KENTUCKY?
rda909
@Alexandra: Absolutely she does. There more people see of her, the more they like her. Guessing you’re “Ready for Hillary?” The more people see of Hillary, the less they like her. Interesting…
Morzer
@Alexandra:
She campaigned pretty well in Massachusetts and didn’t seem to be suffering from an inability to raise money.
Just ask Scott Brown. You’ll find him oscillating back and forth across the Massachusetts/New Hampshire boundary.
Paul in KY
@D58826: That’s his whole shtick.
Gin & Tonic
@J R in WV: In the Gilded Age the media were, if anything, more of a tool of the oligarchs than now. That’s why every major city had multiple newspapers. The concept of neutral, objective reporting of the news is quaint and ahistorical.
Belafon
@the Conster: This. If everyone wants to focus their energy on something useful, whatever it takes to regain control of the House would be it. Getting everyone to register to vote, and for states like Texas, making sure everyone has ID (because you’re going to need it until you either get the right judges or own the legislature to overturn it).
gnomedad
It strikes me that she smiles too much when she isn’t speaking — seems like a false note. Or do women have to do this not to be labeled a b***h?
Paul in KY
@gnomedad: She’s probably amused at Tweety’s histrionics. Mentally comparing him to various dingbats she’s encountered during her teaching career.
Alexandra
@rda909:
Although I follow things closely, I’m not even an American, so am not really invested one way or the other, which might make me a little more dispassionate about the various chances of the Democratic Party retaining and extending power, instead of advocating totemic, quixotic and largely regional candidates who can barely get into double figures amongst current polling of Democratic primary voters, who after all, are the real base… as opposed to the self-described base.
On a political level, I’m more aligned with Elizabeth Warren than Hillary Clinton, but I know who has more chance of winning a national election and shaping the next round of Supreme Court appointments, as well as potentially having considerable coat-tails. I also know who Republicans fear most at the national level.
Nice try, though.
Betty Cracker
@gnomedad: Yes. Women are required to smile. If I had a nickel for every time I was sunk morosely in my own thoughts at a honky-tonk dive only to be interrupted by some yokel and ordered to smile, I could have paid for my education without a student loan. Hopefully things have changed and this isn’t so common any more, but it certainly was in the late 80s / early 90s and was probably even more so in the 60s / 70s of Warren’s youth.
different-church-lady
What are people having such a hard time understanding about “She’s not running in 2016, but might be thinking about doing it later?”
Cervantes
@rda909:
I’d like to know more about this — how Grimes is deploying Warren, how it’s playing in local media — and about how the campaign is going generally. Are you in Kentucky?
different-church-lady
@Alexandra:
Oh come now, just because you can’t actually vote doesn’t mean you can’t bloviate and join in the hate pig-pile of your choice.
Betty Cracker
@Alexandra: I think this is all academic since Warren has said repeatedly she’s not running for president, and I believe her. BUT, polling this far out is utterly meaningless. Most people had not even heard of Obama at this point in 2006.
Also, and this is just my opinion and thus worth less than $.02, but I don’t think it’s true that Warren is a “regional” candidate in the classic sense of the word. She’s got that Okie folksiness going for her even if she is an elitist Harvardian.
And damn if she can’t explain really complex economic forces in easily understandable terms, better than anyone I’ve ever seen, really. If our future as a country hinges on beating back the moneyed forces that are undermining our democracy — and I think it does — Warren is our best asset on that score, in whatever role she chooses to fill.
Cervantes
@different-church-lady:
Anything to avoid thinking about the mid-terms.
Granted, the latter is usually not a cheerful subject unless you’re a Republican.
Gin & Tonic
@different-church-lady: Because in 2020 she’ll be 71, and the US has never elected anyone over 70 to be President.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker: I agree in all respects.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think plenty about the midterms, even if I don’t talk about it much here. There’s a good reason for that: Midterms are by definition local. No one here gives a rat’s ass about Candidate X running for the House to represent Cockroach Acres, Florida. Why would I bore y’all with the details?
Morzer
@Alexandra:
You need to consider name-recognition before you take those polls seriously. Right now, Warren is really a local phenomenon with a national following among progressives. If she ran in the primary (which she doesn’t apparently have any wish to do) you’d see those polling figures shift, probably quite dramatically, as more people discovered who she was and heard what she had to say.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Well, maybe you can think of a reason, yes?
different-church-lady
@Morzer: President Howard Dean agrees with your analysis.
rda909
@Alexandra: That’s why I asked. So then, I completely disagree with the idea that Hillary has the best chance of winning nationally. In fact, she has no chance whatsoever, and that’s my problem with all this “inevitable” talk again, which I cannot believe is happening again since it was over for her in 2008. President Obama had it sown up after South Carolina, yet Hillary kept it going for months which helped give rise to the PUMA movement that’s still mucking things up today and helping Republicans. A few months earlier though, then senator Obama was polling a distant 4-5 places back of Hillary. I live in America and am actively involved national and my local campaigns, and there is no doubt in my mind that there’s a wildfire that can be lit by Senator Warren is she chooses to run, just as President Obama did in 2007-2008.
And you should know that Republicans are the opposite of “scared” about Hillary running. They know she can’t win nationally, and the day after President Obama won his second term, several major news outlets had headlines declaring her the Democratic candidate already for 2016. Rupert Murdoch holds fundraisers for her. They’re doing all they can to have her be the Dem nominee also for the fact that the Clintons are very divisive among Democrats, as we’re seeing play out yet again. Divide and conquer is their favorite tactic.
Hillary tried already in a national election and failed miserably. Senator Warren is our best chance so far. Once more people see her, she’ll rise fast just as President Obama did. But first of course, there are the 2014 midterms, and oh yea, Senator Warren is campaigning for Democrats around the country to keep the focus on winning back the House this fall. And what’s Hillary doing at this same time? Promoting herself only. She had her chance. We’re moving FORWARD.
Alexandra
@Betty Cracker:
You’re absolutely right.
@different-church-lady:
Hate pig-piles are reserved for Republicans and conservatives, no matter which side of the Atlantic they come from.
I’m fairly pragmatic, I guess, and am not a big fan of circular firing squads, reiterating opposition memes about your own side and undercutting your strongest candidates. Bit old-fashioned in that labour unity groove thang, I s’pose.
@rda909:
Keep on truckin’.
Morzer
@different-church-lady:
You seem to be arguing a different case to the one I put forward. Mine is that polling a purely hypothetical candidate with relatively low name recognition doesn’t reflect what they might achieve if they ran and people worked out who they were and what they stood for. It’s like offering odds on a race horse about which nothing is known, other than the fact it has four hooves and a tail.
What’s your argument?
Corner Stone
@rda909:
Do you even listen to yourself? This is a thing you actually believe?
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl: I believe the plan called for moving the prisoners to a supermax type facility stateside. While it may have improved their situation marginally (visibility, access to counsel), it would not have significantly changed the fact that we were indefinitely detaining people without charging or trying them in legitimate courts.
IMO, Sanders wanted no part of simply changing the wallpaper for the prisoners cell.
Betty Cracker
@rda909: I think you give the PUMAs far too much credit if you think they’re in any way relevant today. They were a fart in the whirlwind in 2008, and they’re even less consequential now. The hardest-core PUMAs became Republicans, and good fucking riddance to those losers — all 24 or so of them. The rest had their little tantrum and then did the right thing and came back home to the Democrats. Water under the bridge.
As for “Hillary can’t win nationally,” eh, so much depends on how this all unfolds that there’s just no way to make such a definitive statement now with any degree of accuracy. I’d love to see someone more progressive win — Senator Warren would be wonderful — but she ain’t running. Maybe one of the other up-and-comers can prevail. We’ll have to wait and see. But all this doom-saying about HRC’s chances strikes me as a tad premature.
WaterGirl
@Cervantes: This is how it started. (from an email message from Grimes on 6/12)
amk
@rda909:
That will be the Hillary’s downfall.
Gene108
@rda909:
She has set herself up as the face/voice of liberal economic populism. The media and the opposition, both from Republicans and some Democrats (especially some w/ their own Presidential ambitions who do not like being jumper again by a first term Senator) will look to knock her down a peg.
She cannot “go up”, from a policy perspective. She can go down by not getting enough of her agenda enacted.
The shit storm of misogyny and cries of socialism that will follow her will be hard to overcome.
different-church-lady
@Alexandra:
I’m with you there… I was being sarcastic.
@Morzer:
See preceding reply. And add that Warren’s not dumb, and knows it would take more than 16 months for her to get to that point and win.
It’s possible for multiple people here to be right and wrong at the same time. She’d make a great president. Her name recognition is not very strong today, but that changes when you campaign (nobody knew who the hell Bill Clinton was). And nonetheless it probably doesn’t add up to a win.
Glocksman
If Warren decided to run, I’d be enthusiastically cheering her on and urging everyone to vote for her in both the primaries and the general election.
If HRC runs, I’d grudgingly vote for her in the general, but not in the primaries and I wouldn’t be enthusiastically pimping her candidacy.
That said, since I live in Hoosierstan, the odds of either woman winning Indiana are between small and non to existent, my choice really doesn’t matter under our current system.
Morzer
@different-church-lady:
I took your previous reply as a failed attempt at snark. Not sure what your most recent comment is arguing against.
rda909
@Gene108: President Obama has already overcome similar kinds of things, and won two national elections easily. In fact, he has somewhat defused some of these traditional Republican/media tactics which will make those name-calling games less and less effective for Republicans as time moves on. They already tried to do a version of the “birth certificate/illegitimate” thing with Senator Warren and her Native American lineage, and she beat a sitting Senator in a landslide despite that.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
And that is how it’s done!
Great messaging with organizing on the ground to make it happen. Love it.
Morzer
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-clinton-rape-victim-daily-beast-interview
Looks like certain people really are throwing the kitchen sink at HRC early and often.
different-church-lady
@Morzer:
Fair enough
It’s about the fact that once again people are talking past each other. Apparently because they like it that way.
the Conster
@rda909:
She won In Massachusetts. Let’s not get too far out over our skis here.
LAC
@the Conster: amen. We are still actually in the year 2014 and need to be focused on these house/senate races and yet again we are focused on 2016 with superhero “Inevitability Hillary” or some progressive candidate who is supposed to somehow do everything different (i.e. better) with the same pile of shit than the current president
gogol's wife
@NotMax:
Was it Ronan Farrow? (Forgive me if someone already answered this.)
gogol's wife
@Baud:
LOLOLOL
the Conster
@LAC:
I don’t know why this is so hard to understand. For all the lefty moaning and self-cutting about how Obama is worse than Bush, what progressive piece of legislation has he vetoed? What piece of progressive legislation has he even been sent? I guess as a purity leftist you can imagine that the Obama in your head would never ever pass a single payer health care bill, but that assumes that a single payer bill went sailing through the Republican caucus in your head. Which would basically make you a crazy person.
Southern Beale
I’m so pissed at MSNBC these days. Husband watches Morning Joke while he’s getting ready for work and I usually am also forced to watch the first 10-15 minutes of Chuck Toad before I can chase him out of the bedroom and switch to a Daily Show rerun. This morning Chuck Toad had Ken FUCKING Pollack on … again. I mean, you expect these clowns to be on Fox or CNN but MSNBC? Do they really not have anyone NEW to talk to? At all? Is this OUR fault for not providing an expert? I just don’t get it.
Meanwhile, I notice with great schadenfreude that Pollack’s 2002 book advocating invading Iraq can now be purchased for a whopping one cent.
Applejinx
That was fascinating, and a lot of you are idiots.
Tweety was goading her on like CRAZY, openly, shrewdly. He was using the same Republican lies and ‘blue collar ain’t helped by Democrats’ memes, but he totally subverted them. He knows sounding that airhorn can’t push people towards the Republicans anymore, he knew he was talking to a Democrat who could push past the ‘whiny liberal lady’ tone and sound like a populist firebrand, and he goaded her HARDCORE to get her to do exactly what she did so his audience could see it.
And she did, and he acknowledged that he’d been doing that (quite openly!) and she looked, at the end, like the cat who caught the canary. She knew she’d brought it. He may even have warned her, ‘I’m going to push you, be sure to come back at me if you expect to make your points’.
Tweety’s with us, bigtime. You just have to understand the nature of his job, and he knows better than most of you how to get a performance out of an interviewee. He’d shove hard, and then all the time she was coming back with the answers he wanted, he’d verbally go ‘uh-huh’ and make assenting noises in support.
He WANTED it to look like she was fighting him, not just passively lamenting the mean Republicans in Congress, because the point to be made was that the Dems are in fact fighting and making lots of direct populist reforms which are being directly shot down, again and again, by specifically the Republicans. He followed the segment up with something about how batshit insane the Tea Partiers are compared to real people.
Tweety’s in the tank for the Dems bigtime (appropriately) and this is what it looks like when he’s pushing for you as hard as he can. This is how you win hearts and minds. You show them a populist Dem willing to fight back, and you show her literally arguing and fighting and coming back against your conversational parries (even when you propose stuff that’s literally impossible and you know it) and you leave as the great subtext, “Looks like the Republicans are actively trying to destroy the country”. He doesn’t say it, Warren doesn’t say it, but it is the only conclusion that can be drawn.
We know that. We also don’t see great liberal reforms, literally because it’s true that the Republicans continue to have the power to stonewall it all and are literally doing that down to filibustering judgeships. It’s not wrong of Tweety to hammer the ‘we have seen nothing!’ when we’ve seen nothing. I’m going on food stamps and fuel assistance myself to survive. The important thing is whether he ran over Warren while she was saying the Dems were putting up bills and getting close to passing them (peeling off three measly Republicans, etc). He didn’t. He was distinctly silent and non-interrupty whenever she said she had all the Dems, both the independents, even a few Republicans on board. And when she said it was down to student loans versus millionaires and billionaires. That was the payload Tweety wanted.
Very cool little clip, and I hope lots of people saw it. More than that, I hope people saw it and are prepared to pressure Hillary Clinton to swing that direction lest she get ambushed by a Warren for President camp. I agree Warren’s better in Congress, and I’m totally game for Hillary to be the first female President: in many ways I think she’d be better at it, but as a Clinton she tacks to political winds and it is our job to blow those winds leftward with a vengeance. Hillary needs to be running to the Left like a maniac, afraid she’ll lose out again, convinced the zeitgeist is blowing up in her face. She’ll out-Obama Obama given the correct pressure, but she has to be reading the winds properly.
gene108
@rda909:
I am not talking so much about the name calling, but she is the most national face of the nascent movement to deal with income inequality, stagnant wages, etc.
This gives the lackeys of the 0.01% extra incentive to knock her down a beg. If she cannot get her agenda done than maybe people will feel it is hopeless to try again?
If Hillary Clinton or Martin O’Malley or whoever do not get every liberal bit of addressing income inequality dealt with, it will not be as much of a blow to the overall sentiment because there’s still Elizabeth Warren in the Senate fighting hard for those things.
@Morzer:
Last sentence of the TPM article is interesting. She was appointed the defender. I’m guessing she did some work as a public defender early in her legal career. I do know one of her first jobs out of law school was working for the newly founded Children’s Defense Fund.
NotMax
@gogol’s wife
Could well have been but as mentioned, didn’t catch the name.
NotMax
@gogol’s wife
iI that’s the unprofessional dweeb who stares at the camera and addresses the audience as “you guys,” then certainly so.
LanceThruster
Notes from a lousy time
sparrow
@rda909: I agree with EVERYTHING you said.
I totally believe Sen. Warren to be sincere when she says she’s not running. But I wonder if enough of an impassioned plea could be mounted to where she would consider it. I agree that she is a natural successor to Obama. Fuck Hillary, frankly.
balconesfault
Can Matthews really be that ignorant of how the budgetary process works? Stunning …
OK … just read Applejinx … and I’m enjoying the spin. Not 100% sold, but you got me more than halfway there.
Certainly it’s better than pablum. And MSNBC is giving her a platform to show she’s a fighter, which is worth its weight in gold.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@sparrow: Not everyone wants to be president. She is in a place where she can do a hell of a lot of good for years to come. Having liberals in the House and Senate matters at least as much as having a liberal President.
Chris T.
@WereBear:
That’s totally unacceptable! This system needs to be torn down! …
[pause, aide whispers in ear]
[to aide, sotto voce] What? Private health insurance? I thought he was going through the VA!
[out loud to everyone] This is perfectly acceptable! It proves that the US has the Best Health Care System In The World!