Working from one end to to the other and all points in between
There’s a good article about how Obama and his people are going all out for Hillary this fall in a way that’s unusual for a sitting president. (Liz Warren is all in too.) This makes a real difference, Obama is a popular president, despite what Ron Fournier believes, and his campaigns in 2008 and 2012 were spectacular. I don’t buy into the idea that Hillary will be helped much by the fact that she can run more ads than Trump, but I do think her superior get out the vote effort could easily translate into an extra point or two, and no one does get out the vote better than the Obama people.
One thing I’ve always respected about Obama and Hillary is that they don’t make things all about their fee-fees. You probably know that fee-fees got in the way of Gore using a president with a 60% approval rating as a campaign asset. The 2008 Obama-Hillary was unusually nasty, and I’m sure that from time-to-time they feel a slight sting. But fuck fee-fees. Fee-fees never help, they only hurt.
NIce!
Trump doesn’t need to run ads, since he has MSM backing him.
To be fair to Gore, it wasn’t just about fee-fees. His campaign was afraid that if Clinton stumped for him, the Mighty Wurlitzer world be focused on Clinton’s scandals and less on Gore. What fucked that election up was more about media hostility towards Gore (amply illustrated by Bob Sommersby), Nader’s purity campaign, and when Gore had pulled out a popular vote win in spite of it, corruption in Florida and SCOTUS preemptively shutting down the recount (but at least Scalia’s still dead).
That loss was a he’ll of a lot more complicated than Gore’s hurt fee-fees, and you do the history of that election an injustice when you try to reduce it to a soundbite. If I want that kind of reductionism, I’ll watch CNN or FoxNews.
I wasn’t able to finish it on the first try. Too much Tiger Beat on the Potomac about who was dissing who in the cafeteria, too much “shocking horse race” coverage on the Clinton/Sanders race that was actually predictable from March 15. I’ll make another go of it.
Clear eyes-full heart. We have to defeat Trump or he will destroy our country as sure as God made little green apples.
Networking, selling your candidate, and poll checking are boring work. I have better things to do with my time; like Xbox Live, message boards, and pole checking…
The media did that anyways. A lot of centrist pearl clutching about Gore centered around reintroducing Republican civility and daddies back into the White House. Running away from Clinton did him jack and shit.
I’d be very surprised if PBO, HRC or the professionals within their organizations regard the 2008 race as “unusually nasty” or “feel a slight sting” to this day over harsh words said back then. That some of their supporters still do is undeniable.
yup, ads alone aren’t going to cut it. gotv, gotv, gotv.
@Amanda in the South Bay: It’s not at all clear that Clinton stumping for Gore would have helped all that much. From Gore’s perspective, it’s arguable that the negatives attached to Clinton would have canceled out any positive contribution Clinton might have made. Clinton is still seen to be a wild card, and not necessarily a good person to have on the stump. He certainly didn’t help Hilary in 2008, and a number of people on this blog have a STFU reaction to Bill whenever he puts his foot in his mouth.
I agree with Doug that Obama/Hilary is a potent combination on the campaign trail. I doubt that Bill would have been nearly as effective for Gore.
Even IF Obama disliked Clinton and disliked her politics, he would still fight like hell because HIS legacy is on the line. Pure and simple. If she loses, there is a good chance that his eight years never existed. I do not think that he cares one iota about personalities.
This is about the President’s legacy, and he understands that. He’s always understood that. They’ve been trying to erase his place in history. He wants to cement it. I believe the man should be chiseled into Mount Rushmore for all he’s done for this country. He did everything he did with one Political party committing ECONOMIC TREASON against this country beginning January 20, 2009.
As far as any of the MSM whining about what POTUS is doing for Hillary’s campaign, they’ve been mad that they haven’t been able to knock the President’s Poll Numbers. Putting out bullshyt story after story about ‘ oh, should Hillary have POTUS campaign for her. ‘
The most popular Democrat in the Country campaigning for her – hell yes.
And, especially one that has NFTG.
@rikyrah: Agreed, and Warren appears that she never had fucks to give. I expect Biden to be the most cutting.
@Betty Cracker: Stephanie Miller routinely gets a call from a “Toni” in Los Angeles who has vowed that she will not vote for Secretary Clinton because President and Mrs. Clinton were mean to President Obama in 2008. My eyes cannot roll back far enough in my head. If President Obama has gotten over those slights (and they were real), why should we voters hold those slights against the Clintons and end up punishing ourselves by getting saddled with a Trump Presidency? Madness!
And, the Clinton folk are the ones to put their big girl panties on, because facts are facts:
in 2008, they were the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party Machine.
and, Obama’s team came in their and just won it all.
So, suck it up, and learn from those that beat your azz.
Media thumbs on the scale normalizing the abnormal psychopathic fascistic behavior of Trump as some kind of entertainment for a bunch of mediocre white men in politics and the media **cough**Ron Fournier**Mark Halperin**cough**whose lives aren’t in the balance is what Hillary’s challenge is. They simply have to be sidelined, and Obama is pretty good at that. He’s going to need to be, because they’ll be putting bowling balls on the scales by November.
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I agree that Bill Clinton is a wild card now, and was in 2008 as well. But I think that’s partly what happens when someone is out of politics and out of practice for a long time. I think he’d have been effective on the stump in 2000.
And then there’s this article from the WaPo, about how we’re all angry and angst-filled this year. This is based, of course, on their interviews with the 5% of the electorate that’s “independent,” but torn between the Dems and the Repubs (and not “independents” who are left of the Dems or right of the Repubs).
@rikyrah:
I think a portrait of Obama on Stone Mountain, overwriting the current piece, would be better.
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Doesn’t change the fact that Clinton was still even more popular then than President Obama is now. They were going to tie Gore to Clinton anyway, he might as well have shown that he stood by his still-popular boss and that the wingnuts’ smears didn’t matter.
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Funny given that reducing 2000 to an occasion to hate on teh hippies is balloon juice’s national pastime.
@Patricia Kayden: I remember hearing from at least one commenter here at Balloon Juice who claims he won’t vote for Clinton because he’s still butthurt over the 2008 campaign. I remember the 2008 campaign. I was blogging back then, and I was a strong Obama supporter, and I did get pissed off at the Clinton campaign numerous times for what I saw as cheap-ass shots at Obama — and even more disgusted with the idiotic PUMAs. But at no time was I not going to vote for Clinton had she prevailed. That would have been stupid then, and it’s even stupider to carry that shit around for eight years — long after the principals made their peace and worked together like grownups.
I wish this was hyperbole, but it’s damn near impossible to watch MSNBC and go 5+ minutes without a Trump byline, Trump in the chyron, or simply an interview/discussion about Trump. It’s all that station does nowadays. It’s absurd.
Agreed that it’s very important for Obama’s legacy that he be succeeded by a Democrat. All the more so that it’s his Sec. of State, which would a tacit endorsement of his Presidency, if not an implied approval of a third Obama term.
Also agree that there were good reasons not to campaign with Bill. Gore was VP for 8 years of the good times whereas voters, even Democrats, had good reason to be appalled by Bill Clinton himself, for a while. His approval rating was in part a rejection of impeachment, and it was important for Gore to establish his own identity. Unfortunately, with no help from the media, he wasn’t very good at that.
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Gore also made an own goal of choosing moral scold Lieberman as his running mate to distance himself from Clinton. A VP choice who made heartless Cheney look cuddlier in comparison in their debate.
@joes527:
Nader has a lot to answer for, if that’s what you mean by punching hippies.
@peach flavored shampoo: I know, it’s awful. Even when it’s Tamron Hall trashing on some pro-Trump buffoon it’s still all about Trump.
But I’ve been skimming it waiting for now – HRC’s speech at the NAACP convention.
@peach flavored shampoo:
I got a taste of that this weekend. It’s disgusting. I turn on the TV only for TCM and British detectives.
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
A whole lot of things had to happen for Gore to lose that election; if he had managed to change any one of them, he probably would have won. If he had Clinton stumping for him rather than back in Washington, it probably would have tipped the election from just lost to just won.
I think it would be neat if Elizabeth Warren was the VP pick, Hillary won, and then Warren resigns as VP to stay a senator.
Anyone even slightly following the news knows that Americans are really angry and scared, hate Washington, and the Establishment, and elites, and desperately want an outsider to run the country. This is common knowledge and accepted wisdom.
So what will it say when Hillary Clinton is elected with backing from one two term President and the current two term President and Vice President?
@gogol’s wife: No love for local weather when a tornado watch is nearby?
HRC is looking very stern in this speech. I would not be surprised if she gave the order to expropriate the appropriators and to command the commanding heights!
As the back wall slowly splits open and a line of tanks and armored personnel carriers trails in.
@Betty Cracker:
I agree that holding on to a grudge that I seem to recall that they made their peace with about 8 yrs ago is asinine. Some people know how to be members of a political party and some want to be members of a club they write the rules for.
@eric:
OMG, the VP debate is going to be Must See TV. Been a long time since I’ve seen a live filleting on TV, and that was The Food Channel.
Andrea Mitchell needs to lay off the damn haterade.
@Wapiti: Could be tricky. I thought it was privately owned, maybe even by the Sons of Confederate Veterans?
Not quite! “The carving depicts three Confederate figures during the Civil War: Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. Stone Mountain was once owned by the Venable Brothers and was the site of the founding of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915. It was purchased by the State of Georgia in 1958.” wikipedia
@Betty Cracker:
It was more than just harsh words. Bill Clinton had to be sat down and talked to by Democratic insiders for his South Carolina comments. And even after Obama had won the primary and had won a concession from Hillary, there was still concern over how warmly Bill Clinton would campaign for Obama. However, it certainly seems to be the case that Obama, Hillary and Bill were able to move beyond any contention and acrimony. And you can add to this Biden’s decision not to try a presidential run. I look forward to some honest and hard hitting histories of the 2008 campaign.
That said, 2016 will be the first time in a long time that the sitting president actively campaigned for his party’s candidate. Gore brushed off Bill Clinton in 2000. McCain avoided Dubya in 2008. But now you have a veritable all-star squad of Obama, Sanders, Warren, Biden and Bill Clinton all united in favor of Hillary, and all very capable campaigners. I don’t want to say that this team is unbeatable, but it certainly looks formidable.
OT, re Turkish coup: they used WhatsApp. LOL.
Does anyone know why Sarah Palin was disinvited to the GOP convention – or disinvited herself?
I may have missed an earlier thread. Internet free for ten days!
Nice ZZ Top reference!
This election, not unlike Gore vs. Bushwack (relative to the lives of a few hundred thousands Iraqi people!), will be a major watershed for us and hence, the world. Losing now and most of everything good achieved the last eight years will be lost and far worse, for a generation or more thanks to the inferior court needing replacements over the next President’s term.
Let’s not forget that Gore also chose the worst VP candidate since Eagleton. One who actively denounced his own party’s highly popular president. One who repeatedly demanded that dirty effing hippies go away. One whose wife was an anti-video game purity crusader. Not to mention a major dose of anti-charisma. Only Zell Miller would have been a worse pick.
@gogol’s wife: And … there is the reduction.
Gore ran a piss poor campaign, and when shit got real made every wrong move possible. But yeah, lets blame Nader for Gore snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, because … narrative!
@Corner Stone:
That’s her oxygen. Without it she’d ….
Hmmmmmm.
@catclub:
Alaska is just too far away. That’s why she never leaves the place for any reason.
and every once in a while a Villager will note how odd it is that Obama is pretty popular, all things considered, yet the country blames Both Sides, as we all do
Also, since Fournier was invoked, I have never heard a VSP acknowledge that a big part of Trump’s appeal was his early declaration that he would take aim at the safety net, “entitlement reform” in Villagespeak– he’s since flip-flopped, several times, I think, but he sure as hell isn’t selling Ryanist austerity. One of the big (and dishonest) selling points in Brexit was that it would mean huge increases in spending on the national health service. Another point that gets swept under the rug because no one on Sally Quinn’s guest list understands that the New Deal and the Great Society are still pretty popular.
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Many things had to go wrong for Gore to lose (or, perhaps more accurately, not be awarded more Electoral College votes than Bush), but just imagine Bill Clinton speaking at a dozen black churches in Florida the two weekends before the election, or calling up black-focused radio stations every morning the week before the election. He didn’t need to help *much* – he only needed to help a tiny little bit.
I never had a problem with Gore not making Clinton a centerpiece of his campaign, but not using Clinton at all, and particularly not using him in communities where he was really, really popular, never made any sense to me.
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Nope.
All those negatives were in the DC political/media world. Bill Clinton was very popular with the entire population after the impeachment events.
Is that really true? Data doesn’t seem to back that up, unless you mean “mildly popular”.
@liberal: those who don’t keep it as real as you don’t get it. Man.
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@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I thought that large parts of Trump’s appeal in the GOP primaries was that he was NOT idiotically in favor cutting SS and Medicare – which both go predominantly to old white people. Those old white GOP voters have no problems with keeping SS and Medicare – and the ideological GOP, like Cruz and Ryan, cannot get their heads around that fact.
@Brachiator: I remember 2008 well, and I also recall what went on in other campaigns. “It ain’t beanbag” is a cliche for a reason.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Fuck off. If you have actual data that suggests Obama is really popular, post it here. Otherwise STFU.
@liberal:
In our current media and political environment, “mildly” popular is still stunningly popular. Do you know of any nationally recognized politician with better numbers?
@liberal: did you forget to have your juice today?
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, that’s fine. But it’s distinctly weird to hear about coup participants communicating with it.
It’s hard because NOTHING he says is true:
It’s like he’s immunized from being exposed as a total fraud by the sheer volume of the fraud. They have to work backward. What has he said that is true? That’s gotta be a single digit list. Instead of “records contradict Donald Trump on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 …” look for an instance where records coincide with Donald Trump.
@Kropadope: Don’t know. IMHO “popular” means “by historical standards”. By that measure, Obama’s popularity is mediocre at best. (I’m being descriptive, not normative, here.)
@Culture of Truth:
It’s politics. There are 3 games to be played in succession politics.
1. Your hopeful opposition party predecessor is totally wrong and you are going to replace everything.
2. Your hopeful same party predecessor is totally wrong and you are going to replace everything.
3. Your hopeful same party predecessor is well liked, the policies are for the most part acceptable, and you plan to continue governing in the same direction.
Gore was in situation #3. Walking away did him no favors (nor us either) and it was a major mistake. This ain’t tiddlywinks, it’s politics. It isn’t always pretty, it isn’t even always good or right, but it is what it is. Clinton had a huge favorability rating, most people saw that the impeachment crap was just that. Walking away from Clinton made Gore look stupid. He walked away from not only Clinton but from himself as well. And as we know it didn’t work out all that well. Sure he actually won but when I look up US Presidents I don’t see his name anywhere. It was close enough that the Bush dynasty was able to steal the election and it shouldn’t have been.
@liberal:
You really are a gop paid troll.
Fuck you and the elephant you rode in on.
@liberal:
I wonder where schrodinger’s cat’s comment went?
@Betty Cracker:
Exactly, it was a normal contested primary that the media played up as an incredibly ‘nasty’ fight to generate more interest, a primary is a contest, there are contrasts, calling out previous votes and positions, that’s politics. Some of the supporters on both sides may still hold grudges, but a real politician knows that’s just how the ‘game’ is played. Hillary and Obama have both worked with people who have called them everything from stupid, corrupt, incompetent, and murderer, ’cause that’s what you do. It’s not personal it’s politics.
@liberal:
IMO modern understanding of the term popular for a politician is 50% + 1. By that usage, Obama is a popular sitting president.
@Corner Stone: also compared to any second term president at the same point in his tenure of the last fifty years. I think that’s “historical standards”. But I don’t read HA Goodman or Salon.
@eric:
Even IF Obama disliked Clinton and disliked her politics, he would still fight like hell because
HIS legacy is on the linehe has spent his entire professional life working for progressive causes and against everything the current GOP stands for.Why reduce it to petty personal goals?
@Betty Cracker:
What do you call what you do here?
You don’t have to worry,
Because taking care of business is his name.
A side note… this photo of the ‘Women For Trump’ meet-up in Cleveland. It has been noted that a ‘Women For Trump’ sign would be open to misinterpretation.
@low-tech cyclist:
The cool thing about counterfactual history is that everything always works out perfectly.
@liberal: Two terms. You can bitch and moan all you want.
@liberal: He’s in the mid-50s, is what I saw somewheres. That’s about the ceiling; there’s no way the GOP base (about 45%) would ever agree to his popularity. 100% – ~45% is ~55%. So he’s at his apex, if the poll number I saw was legit.
Decades ago, there may have been a certain population that would “escape” the tribal-ness and judge a opposite party pres as “popular”, but not anymore. Absent a catastrophic event (like 9/11), you’ll never see another Pres get higher than the mid fifities, IMO.
@liberal: His favorability rating is 56%. That’s great given all the ish he’s been through and should help Secretary Clinton as she campaigns with him. So yes, he’s very popular — especially among Democrats such as myself. He has an up to 90% approval rate among Democrats, so yes, despite your belief to the contrary, President Obama is pretty damn popular.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....-1046.html
@SiubhanDuinne: I should have added “too.” IOW, I was following this stupid campaign sniping and horse race bullshit just as closely then as now. Nothing to be proud of!
Yeeeaaaarrrggghhhh!!! I’ve been creamcheesed by MSNBC. Hugh Hewitt, again.
@liberal:
Dude, stop trying. You’re not making any sense. How can someone’s popularity be “mediocre at best”? It’s funny how a Rightwing troll is now calling himself “liberal” as a disguise. LOL.
@MattF: ‘Women for Trump’? Is he holding auditions for Wife #4?
@James E Powell: RE: I think [Clinton would] have been effective on the stump in 2000.
True enough.
How about this: Clinton was effective on the stump in 2008. He may be effective in 2016 as well.
@Kay: Secretary Clinton needs to make ad after ad highlighting his lies — especially those where he claims to have donated to charities. Those are particularly low and despicable and should make him unelectable to reasonable folks. How disgusting do you have to be to lie about donating to veterans and sick people?
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Ro Fornier did once acknowledge that he holds Obama to a different standard because he campaigned on bring the country together, so even if the other side is crazy and say f**k you at every turn, Obama said he would work with them so it’s his fault if he can’t get them to work with him. The logic is mind boggling, so I say f**k him with a rusty spoon for his both siderism.
@Corner Stone: I deleted it, because WP won’t let me edit my comments after the recent upgrade.
@hovercraft:
Is that how you remember the 2008 primary? … as a contest of ideas? You don’t remember the candidate toying with tearing the party apart over Florida and Michigan, the naked racism from supporters, or even the racist dogwhistle from the candidate herself? Do you remember Clinton explaining that she had to stay in the primary because there was still time for Obama to be assassinated?
None of this justifies “Never Clinton,” but pretending that the 2008 primary was fought over “previous votes and positions” is ahistorical.
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s quite selfish of you! What upgrade?
@catclub:
She may have been busy with her son’s legal issues, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in connection with his domestic abuse case. For once if that is the case her priorities are in the right place.
@catclub:
I think the reason for Palin’s no show is because her son was just jailed for domestic violence.
@liberal:
In a 50/50 nation where only 25 % of republicans approved of him in the month he became president and had barely done anything, which means that his ceiling is basically 75, 56 % counts as a popular president.
EDIT For Math Correction His Ceiling is 62 %
@hovercraft:
The fact that useless Ron Fournier has a voice that is amplified at all in any national media given the plethora of smart insightful women and people of color opinionators is evidence of the power of white supremacy’s role in enforcing and enabling mediocrity, especially in the media.
@Corner Stone: OK I should say overhaul, which made it work worse than it did before.
The comment was about Whatsapp, which is like the cell phone version of Facebook in India and many other countries (it is owned by Facebook too, incidentally). All your older relatives are on it and they keep sending you internet hoaxes that were debunked a decade ago. Extremely tiresome.
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I disagree with Doug that it was a slam dunk decision for Gore to make but I disagree with you that Clinton would have been a distraction or a problem for Gore on the Stump. I think Gore made a perfectly reasonable decision, given what was then the conventional wisdom about “Clinton fatigue” and the difficulty attendant on anyone trying to keep the white house after eight years of the same party in power. I think it was reasonable, but a mistake, because I think Clinton was still extremely popular and that firing up the base to get revenge on the Republicans for the impeachment would have been a winning strategy, rather than playing to the mushy middle who were thought to be sick of the Clinton drama. I think the entire attitude of the Democratic Party and its spokesmodels (presidential candidates) has really shifted since Obama won. They have a much, much better idea of how important the base is, and what excites the base. And they are less likely to worry about appealing to the angry white/male/mushy/middle imaginary voter that bedevilled Clinton’s two elections.
@Betty Cracker: Yet you became increasingly butthurt about Sanders over the course of the primary.
Do you people even listen to yourselves?
@goblue72: Sanders has conceded and it is time for you to get over yourself. Or at the very least stop haunting the comment section.
@Patricia Kayden:
Secretary Clinton needs to make ad after ad highlighting his lies
What HRC needs to do, and I expect she will beginning in her convention speech, is make her positive case for her presidency. Among low information voters, this is totally missing. She needs three or four bold strokes that address domestic concerns. I’m sure we all have our lists.
@catclub: The official story is that “it’s too far” from Alaska to Ohio.
Apparently they don’t have airports in Alaska.
Uh oh. “You people” ALERT! WAH-WAH WAH-WAH WAH-WAH!
@Betty Cracker:
Gotcha, thanks.
@goblue72: You’re getting into Rethuglican slime zones of projection there, ace.
Obama is going all in on supporting Hillary because for him this is a Legacy election. He needs to ensure that the policies he set – Obamacare above all – do not come undone with a Republican in the White House. He’ll do what he can to free up Congress – Senate maybe, House is likely too far gone – as well, but the Presidency is one campaign he CAN positively affect for the Democrats.
@justawriter: Yes, this is what I think. I thought that Lieberman was a good choice on paper, but the more I saw him the less enthused I was. I no longer know who the other choices were. It was amazing to me how many people I knew voted for Bush because Cheney was on the ticket. I don’t know that the VP choice was all that consequential for Gore. If anything, Lieberman probably helped him in Florida, for all the good it did.
@randy khan: And Gore making a big point of NOT using Clinton was the really stupid thing to do.
@Barbara:
In truth I don’t recall that ever happening. Other than “people say” do you have any evidence?
@PaulWartenberg2016: Like nearly every Dem, he sought power (and seeks power for others) in order to benefit the American People, and anything that reflects well on him is just gravy. This is unlike the Rethuglican attitude, which is a lot like O’Brien’s in 1984. Power for the sake of power.
@goblue72:
FTFY. People became increasingly upset about Sanders toward the end of the primary because he stopped campaigning on actual issues and started campaigning on how awful Hillary is and how he was being cheated by the party.
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Clinton’s popularity in 1999-2000 was in the green (60 percent) and he could have easily campaigned in some states that Gore barely lost – Florida isn’t the only one, there’s also Clinton’s home state of Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada, Kentucky, Gore LOST Tennessee? –
@James E Powell: I don’t think there are any speeches or public statements to that effect, but it was very clear at the time that Gore chose Liebarman to separate himself from Clinton, Lieberman being the Senator who had most vocally criticized Clinton in the Senate. I don’t think the point is all that contested.
@aimai:
Love your comment (in fact, I appreciate most of your comments). However, when Bill Clinton ran for president I think the “white/male/mushy/middle imaginary voter” was a real factor. After 12 years of Reagan and Bush I, the pendulum was just beginning to swing back towards the democrats. Even now, Reagan’s trickle down economics (voodoo economics) has been extremely difficult to dislodge.
I hope democrats and democrats with $$$ recognize the importance of enshrining the Obama presidency with the same fervor as the Reaganites.
@goblue72: Sanders was trashing the Democratic Party, which is the only thing that stands between us and the Trumpocalypse, and I complained about it. So? Now that he’s stopped doing that, I’m over it. See how easy that is?
@Barbara: Definitely.
@Barbara:
According to the Wikipedia article on the Gore 2000 campaign, it was a fairly extensive list:
Just about anyone listed would have been better than Lieberman. Okay, I’ll give you Zell Miller.
@aimai: In hindsight, Gore gave too much credence to MSM bots, forgetting that they are in most cases the media arm of the GOP.
@goblue72: instead of constantly sniping at the other posters here, why don’t you lead by example and tell us about some of your super successful grassroots organizing and activism that totally really happened. You could be an inspiration to us all!
@Patricia Kayden:
Seems obvious to me that using the nym “liberal” would advertise he’s anything but.
@catclub:
Her son has been arrested
@pamelabrown53:
According to Raw Story he cut a plea deal that will keep him out of jail.
@liberal:
The 45% of the country that is definitely Republican is never going to like a Democratic President. Just as the 45% of the country that is definitely Dems is never going to like a Rep.
So, The ceiling for a Democratic President is 55% and Obama is around 52%. At this time in his Presidency, Bush was in the 25-35% range.
Yes, Obama is popular.
@Harold Samson: I mark “liberal” as a very sincere, and utterly useless, purer-than-Bernie-Sanders’-teardrops keyboard warrior who totally wishes s/he (I suspect he) had been alive/old enough in the 60s to join in some real protests, man, and take to streets, which s/he totally would have done, but now it’s, like, all too late and lame and sold out and shit. But he reads and gets, some really radical shit. He gets it. See also, GoBlow
@joes527:
I’m not forgetting any of that, as a black person I knew what the Clinton campaign meant ever time they said he couldn’t be the nominee because “he can’t win”, let alone all those overt expressions of racism. My point is that in every campaign the candidates use every bit of dirt they can to malign their opponent that they can get away with. There is racism, misogyny, ageism, and more, there is a reason that negative campaigning is a thing it works, but professional politicians know it is rarely personal. That’s the reason the candidates are usually able to let bygones be bygones, while the staff and family stay miffed. The Clinton’s race baited in the ’08 campaign, but they turned around and went to bat for Obama, and now the black vote is behind her >90%, we understand that’s just politics. Their positions were practically identical, the campaign was mostly personal, I remember that.
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
He and Halpern are among the worst of the ‘highly respected’ media voices who excuse the behavior of republicans, while nitpicking every utterance of democrats. You can throw Mrs Greenspan in there too. Our ‘liberal’ media sucks.
@Barbara:
It was very clear to me that Holy Joe was chosen to contest Florida, the opposing candidate’s brother’s home state. Not only did he rally the Jewish vote, he was also an ally to the anti-Castro Cubans who were all in a dither about Elian Gonzalez. Without Lieberman on the ticket, Gore would have lost Florida by a large margin.
Lieberman was also the Corporate Democrat on the ticket because Gore moved Left – Read his convention speech. The Village called it a declaration of class warfare.
That the Village declared that Holy Joe was a rebuke to Clinton is additional evidence that it was the Village that insisted that the whole election would be about Clinton & blowjobs.
@James E Powell: good points all, and while I do think Lieberman was chosen in part because of his public scolding of the Clenis– the rumor was Gore was sincerely disgusted by both the affair and Clinton’s recklessness– I think a lot of the grief Gore gets for picking him is based on post 2000 war-mongering and related asshole-ish behavior, or at least stuff he did after Gore picked him, like his utterly useless debate against Cheney
Yep. I don’t like Clinton. I think she’s a bad candidate, a poor retail politician, arrogant, entitled, and stiff. But I’m behind (I can’t bring myself to say “with”) her now. It’s about electing a Dem administration, and keeping the GOP, and Trump, out of office; it’s not about my fee-fees.
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t know. That short list is pretty depressing. I mean, ‘better than Lieberman’ is a fairly low bar. Evan Bayh and Andrew Cuomo may somehow clear that bar, but not by a lot.
@rikyrah:
Let’s see, that is 7 ‘amens’, 2 more ‘amens’ a second to the ‘hell yes’, and thank goodness for the NFTG.
@peach flavored shampoo:
True…unless & until we somehow manage to address some of the artificial “props” helping the GOP keep its head above water. Overturning Citizens United would help, addressing the GOPs voter-suppression laws would help too. Most of all it will be good to see the current generation – anyone who voted for the first time in 2008, 2012, 2016 – help change the nation’s priorities.
@James E Powell:
Didn’t FL have a popular sitting Democratic Senator? Forget his name.
If Gore wanted Florida he could’ve tapped him.
@SiubhanDuinne:
I wonder why Bob Graham did not make the short list. When I heard him talk back then he seemed lot better than Lieberman.
@schrodinger’s cat:
What was Gore supposed to do? Take to Twitter? Or Facebook?
The MSM had a stranglehold on telling people what to think that only recently has been able to be circumvented by social media.
Though there are interesting elements to this article, simply regarding the machinations of cooperation, I have to disagree with Doug!’s original premise that it’s “good”. It starts from all kinds of faulty premises: that voters see electing a president of the same party as “dynastic” (rather than, you know, rewarding successful governance), that the national mood for revolution is so overwhelming and Obama/Clinton were blind not to see it coming (when, as others have noted, Obama maintaining a low-mid-50s approval suggests something different) — and then it, like most political coverage this season, wildly overstates how “close” Sanders came to winning, ignoring the fact that Hillary had mathematical inevitability post March 15th (post-Super Tuesday, really, despite the national press freakout over a 1-point Sanders win in MI). That’s a awful lot of CW horseshit mixed in with the decent nuts-and-bolts reporting.
@hovercraft:
On the other hand, there are some radio row interviews from the GOP convention about Jeb and the other Bushes staying away, because they are taking Trump’s continued diss of “low energy Jeb” very personal.
Some scuttlebutt that Newt is OK with Trump not selecting him as VP, but that Christie is very, very, very disappointed. Big butthurt.
@gene108: He could have done what Obama did, not cared too much about their concern trolling.
@joes527:
You guys are all ignoring the fact that Al Gore WON that election, and while the votes were being counted the Republican Supremes stopped that recount and declared George Walker Bush, grandson of pro-Nazi Senator and Ambassador Preston Bush, president of the USA.
Bush didn’t win the election, he was selected by Republicans to be president.