by hilzoy
Hillary Clinton really should not have gotten into the business of talking about who has contempt for which voters. By all accounts, she is ambitious and hard-hitting. That means that she has, in all likelihood, said any number of things that could be taken to express contempt for various groups of voters. And once she decided to get into the “bitter” debate, it was only a matter of time before they surfaced. As I noted before, she has been quoted as saying “screw ’em” about southern white working class voters. Now Celeste Fremon at Huffington Post has acquired audio of her saying the following at a “small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday”:
“We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.”
Fremon adds:
“Clinton’s remarks depart radically from the traditional position of presidential candidates, who in the past have celebrated high levels of turnout by party activists and partisans as a harbinger for their own party’s success — regardless of who is the eventual nominee — in the general election showdown.
The comments also contradict Clinton’s previous statements praising this year’s elevated Democratic turnout in primaries and caucuses, and appear to blame her caucus defeats on newly energized grassroots voter groups that she has lauded in the past as “lively participants” in American democracy.”
She also notes that MoveOn denies having opposed the war in Afghanistan.
A few comments: first, I am a member of MoveOn. I joined during the Clinton impeachment hearings, and have remained on their list ever since. I signed some of their petitions opposing the war in Iraq, and voted for an endorsement of Obama, though I wavered on that one because I worried that since Republicans equate MoveOn with radicals, it might be counterproductive. Needless to say, I supported the war in Afghanistan.
All it takes to be one of MoveOn’s “3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers” is to sign up for their emails. You don’t pay dues, sign position papers, or anything like that. You just sign up for the emails, and voila! you are a genuine certified MoveOn member. Personally, I’m a member because I like seeing the emails they send out. I would be astonished if, say, none of the editors at RedState was a “member” for exactly the same reason. More to the point, I would be astonished if a lot of their members hadn’t signed up because of one particular issue — e.g., the war in Iraq — and just stayed on the list.
Which is just to say: membership in MoveOn means very little.
Much more to the point, equating “the activist base of the Democratic Party” with people who “didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with” is just completely wrong. “The activist base of the Democratic Party” is concerned with a lot of issues. A small number of us opposed the war in Afghanistan. That is not a mainstream position within “the activist base of the Democratic Party”, as far as I know. On the other hand, a whole lot of us opposed the war in Iraq. To the extent that “the activist base” opposes Clinton, her vote on Iraq has a lot more to do with it than her vote on Afghanistan.
Conflating opposition to the war in Iraq with opposition to the war in Afghanistan is exactly the sort of thing that drives me up a tree when, say, Peter Beinart does it. It amounts to taking a position that a whole lot of people hold — either opposing Clinton herself, or opposing the war in Iraq — and conflating it with one that only a small minority of people hold, and then using that supposed “fact” to discredit your opponents — to cast them as members of some tiny fringe that doesn’t need to be taken seriously. It is what Atrios calls the “dirty f*cking hippies” argument: that people who oppose the war in Iraq, or Clinton herself, are just relics of the 1960s, or some other variant of “not serious people like us”, and their views can therefore be dismissed out of hand. “MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with.”
To say this about her opponents is just wrong. But to say it about the activist base of her party — about the people who are motivated enough to show up for caucuses and participate in the electoral process — is insane. Hillary Clinton is running for the nomination of the Democratic Party. She is trying to represent us. If she thinks that people like publius, who caucused in Texas, is worthy of contempt, or that the stunning increase in Democratic voter participation this year is not a cause for joy but a sign that the dirty f*cking hippies have taken over, why doesn’t she just become a Republican? She’s certainly talking like one.
***
UPDATE: (1) To be clear, what bothers me is both her mischaracterization of Democratic activists’ views and the fact that, as I read it, she might as well have said: it was so much easier when voters were more docile and didn’t pester us with their actual views.
(2) I didn’t mean to imply that anyone who opposed the invasion of Afghanistan was not worth taking seriously; just that that seemed to me to be what Clinton meant when she said “MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with”, and that she was using opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan to mean: not serious.
I think the case against invading Afghanistan was a whole lot harder to make than the case against invading Iraq. But I see no reason to think that there were no good reasons for opposing it. (“Good reason”, here, doesn’t mean “reason I accept”: obviously, since I supported invading Afghanistan, I think that the case against invasion wasn’t good enough.) Reasons based on extensive knowledge of Afghanistan’s history and our military capabilities leap to mind as a possibility. In any case, though, I was characterizing what I took to be Clinton’s views, not mine.
But hilzoy, Obama made condescending comments about Ordinary Americans. Clinton made condescending comments about Democrats.
Don’t you see the difference?
[/snark]
To be clear, what bothers me is both her mischaracterization of Democratic activists’ views and the fact that, as I read it, she might as well have said: it was so much easier when voters were more docile and didn’t pester us with their actual views.
I don’t care for Clinton or Obama, but I prefer Obama simply because he doesn’t do what you’re talking about here, hilzoy. Bill Clinton threw portions of the base under the bus during his Presidency. Hillary Clinton is proving ready, willing and able to do the same.
This is what I don’t get about her die hard supporters: SHE DOESN’T GIVE A FLIP WHAT YOU THINK. You’re special people right now because she needs your vote and your anger.
Why is that so hard to see?
Afghanistan was a NATO war. It was the Intelligence Committee that planned and funded it. The money was sent to ‘friends.’ It was ‘Green Berets and Peace Corps.’ The money went to the history there with an emphasis on buying the Taliban and the rest. NATO wars are fought differently with the US letting members take care of themselves and no US support. The support would be intelligence work that might not go along with NATO and cost them lives.
The war was paying off families and friends.
Atrios’ hippies are federal employees. If the federal job is not there, there is always the NGO.
MoveOn’s base seems to be retired federal employees with an emphasis on foreign policy and National Security. They came out big around Plame. She is Hillary’s close friend. Federal employees are something dems claim; they created the work and got them the jobs, so they have to be taken seriously. Big votes in Maryland, etc. ‘Soft power,’ with a strong emphasis on employment.
MoveOn would be something to avoid if you supported the Afghanistan war because it is effectively a write off of our NATO allies and mostly foreign policy and National Security work. Soft power, civil society and federal money not through federal employees; there is very little work there. NGOs and ‘friends’ got the money.
Personally, I think it’s pretty clear that Hillary has contempt for all voters, as evidenced by the fact that her favorite tactic is loudly and self-righteously accusing Obama of various political sins of which she herself is guilty (supporting NAFTA, regurgitating right wing talking points, gutter politics, etc.).
Like Hilzoy, I am a “member” of MoveOn — I get the emails. I have even gone so far as to attend a couple of “house parties”, but mostly out of curiosity. My membership in MoveOn is as tenuous as you can get. But I still get personally pissed off when the likes of Hillary and Dubya bad-mouth MoveOn.
Back during the “Betray Us” ad controversy, Dubya publicly muttered that Congressmen who failed to condemn the ad were more afraid of offending MoveOn than of offending the US military. Translated from Republican into English, that statement implies this: Dubya’s idea of democracy is a system of government wherein politicians kowtow to generals, rather than to citizen groups.
The thing about Dubya is, he’s not just evil — he’s also stooopid. Hillary, on the other hand, is supposed to be smart as a whip. So it’s not possible to shrug off Hillary’s words on the grounds that, like Dubya, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.
Hillary has therefore offended me even more than Dubya did.
At this point, I am down to one last-ditch reason why I will hold my nose and vote for Hillary in November if I have to: at least she’s not John McCain. On all other grounds, I’ve had it with her.
— TP
Rove invented the “MoveOn opposed going into Afghanistan” lie.
Anybody, and I mean anybody, who opposes a Clinton is “worthy of contempt” [and more] in their eyes.
This political harpie really needs to stop fouling the Democratic nest. Just go away wouldja? Of course she won’t. If she can’t get the nomination in ’08, she’ll do anything to sabotage Obama so she can try again in ’12.
The only good thing about this primary cycle if that it shows her own Party just how narcissistic and dispicable Hillary Clinton really is.
In retrospect, we’d have been much better off taking the first billion dollars and offering it as a bounty for verifiable remains of Osama bin Laden that could pass inspection by any medical examiner who wished to do so. But that’s retrospective.
I’m appalled by Clinton’s comments, but I can’t say I’m surprised. The Democratic Party leadership clearly feels about the party exactly the way the Washington press and lobbying establishment feels about the capitol. I’m thinking here of Broder’s “they came in and trashed the place, and it wasn’t even their place” comment. The party matters more to them as the vessel of their own power than it does as a representative entity.
Her full quotes condemn more than just MoveOn. It condemns any party activist who worked against here. Also, it talked about them intimidating her supporters in NV. Of course, MoveOn had not endorsed Obama at that time.
This came after Super Tuesday. At that point she was aleady supposed to have been crowned as presumptive nominee. I have a sense that the money givers she was talking to were either pissed off, scared about their investment, or both. We know that Clinton refuses to take any responsibility (and I mean both of the Clinton’s) unless backed into a corner.
This was her trying to find an excuse other than her own incompetency in running a campaign for her problems.
What’s interesting is that those comments were made so many weeks ago, when now she is practically saying the same thing in public. What’s she saying in private NOW?
first, I am a member of MoveOn. I joined during the Clinton impeachment hearings, and have remained on their list ever since.
Hilzoy, why do you hate freedom! =) I kid, I kid. But seriously, I subscribe to the HuffPo digest and get it everyday in email, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with everything an organization or information outlet has to say.
the one positive point for me is that Hillary’s desperate play opens up a new version of the vocabulary game that I used to amuse myself with: how many “in” words can you plausibly use to describe Dubya? Incoherent. Inarticulate. Inauthentic. Insane. Incurious. And lately, in deep shit. But that became boring pretty fast. There were too many.
now though, we have “des/dis” words to describe Hillary. Despicable. Dishonest. Desperate.
The game is on again.
Disingeneneous? disaster?
The media which is hopelessly decayed and decadent will do its best to destroy our candidate whoever that may be. so the question is not which one is the best or which one is female or which one had the best helth care plan. To anyone who cares about getting a Democrat intot he White House the question is which one is best at dealing with the inevitable media driven faux outrage shit storms? I’d say Obama because too much of what the media says about HRC is in fact true. She will say anything. She is manipulative. She is a serial exaggerator. She isn’t trustworthy. Her husband did sell favors for money. Obama may very well be sunk by the thousand cuts of characgtere assasination (flag pins, Wright, flag pins Wright, Ayers, flag pins Wright bitter, bitter) but 1. he doesn’t respond with the usual Democrat apology/whine pattern. he resonds like a winner either with eloquence or disdainful humor. 2 none of it is true which makes him easier to defend 3. he doesn’t take the high road by ignoring. In stead he takes the high road by showing what a bunch of crap it all is–labelling it Washignto insider politics, which it is.
If the election was to day it wouldn’t matter which we nominated because both wouuld lose. It may be that by the time we finally pick one the long primary and HRC’s legitmizing of rightwing smears will make Obama unelectable.
fWell in any case I am off to my county convention where, wether HRC like it or not, I am going to participate in my party’s decsion making process.
Hilary is DLC to the core — it is out in the open. It has always been the biggest question mark about her — to what extent would she be accommodating to the more activist base of her party. Now we know — not at all.
She would be very bad for the party if she got the nomination.
hilzoy writes:
To say this about her opponents is just wrong. But to say it about the activist base of her party — about the people who are motivated enough to show up for caucuses and participate in the electoral process — is insane. Hillary Clinton is running for the nomination of the Democratic Party. She is trying to represent us. If she thinks that people like publius, who caucused in Texas, is worthy of contempt, or that the stunning increase in Democratic voter participation this year is not a cause for joy but a sign that the dirty f*cking hippies have taken over, why doesn’t she just become a Republican? She’s certainly talking like one.
Bruce Baugh writes:
I’m appalled by Clinton’s comments, but I can’t say I’m surprised. The Democratic Party leadership clearly feels about the party exactly the way the Washington press and lobbying establishment feels about the capitol. I’m thinking here of Broder’s “they came in and trashed the place, and it wasn’t even their place” comment. The party matters more to them as the vessel of their own power than it does as a representative entity.
This is disappointing, but it is about as surprising as a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout of an overly leveraged Investment Bank.
The activist wing of a party is normally expected to contribute time, talent and treasure while remaining discreetly off-stage so as not to frighten the low-information voters in the general election, and not to expect much from a policy standpoint if the party wins. The same principle applies in the GOP – look at the consternation and panic that arose when Mike Huckabee was surging ahead in the early Republican primaries at the start of this season.
I’ve been saying for some time now that there are two Democratic parties, and right now they are at (metaphorical) war with each other, because the progressive wing is challenging the normally dominant DLC wing for control of the party. The biggest difference between this race and 1972 is that there doesn’t seem to be a broad stop-Obama movement amongst the majority of the party leadership, instead Hillary is carrying that flag by herself. I hope that bodes well for the general election, and that Hillary will bow out in a graceful manner when the delegate math becomes insurmountable. For all the nastiness now I think that may still happen, sometime between post-North Carolina and post-Oregon.
On a more positive here-we-go-back-to-the-1970’s note, I was pleased to see that Obama has been endorsed by William Ruckelshaus of Watergate Saturday-Night-Massacre fame, and former head of the EPA.
I think there is a deeper problem here, one that a number of commentators, pundits and party leaders pooh-poohed in recent weeks. And that is the problem of irreparably splitting the party. Bill Clinton and now Hillary Clinton have run to a “centrist” base with a eye toward co-opting the issues that appeal to independents and Regan Dems. It’s the DLC philosophy. The “activist base” that she dismisses is clearly to the left of where the Clinton’s run. So she attempts to marginalize those more liberal elements of the party, fearing they are on the road to ruin. This is part of the reason she feels Obama can’t win – he’s too liberal (but not the only reason).
The left-right argument is an old one in the Democratic party and truth be told, no national candidate can win without both elements. The question is how to unite the two and keep them effectively united.
It has become increasingly clear lately that as Hillary’s options narrow, she has tilted more and more to the right edge of the party. In fact there has been increasing concern that she has gone too far in that direction and crossed the boundary – and with her attacks on Obama from that edge she was damaging the party and the ultimate chances for victory in Nov. However, many folk came to her defense and argued that she had a right to run and any damage was collateral and repairable.
The comments in question, at the very least, make that analysis suspect. Alienating a large part of the party base and using the loyalty of your supporters as a lever against that group is surely party destructive. The polling that shows that 28% of her supporters will vote Republican if she fails to get the nomination – even in the face of the obvious unfavorable delegate and popular vote math – is an indication of the potential damage in the offing. It is increasingly clear that the HRC campaign is going to cause major cracks in the party base no matter if she wins or loses. It’s time to reassess her viability vs party vulnerability and for the party leaders to step in. This isn’t just an isolated instance – she is threatening not only a presidential victory, but also posing a real threat to the down ticket races also.
hilzoy:
If she thinks that people like publius, who caucused in Texas, is worthy of contempt
That should read “are worthy of contempt.” The verb modifies the plural “people,” not the singular “publius.”
[/Farber]
Otherwise, great post, and I couldn’t agree with you more. How much you want to be this gets close to zero MSM attention? As Colbert only half-joked on Thursday night, the MSM has a vested interest in prolonging the horse race as much as they can, so only the front runner will get serious negative attention.
was curious to see how the pro-Hillary blogs are taking this, so i went over to HillaryIs44.com.
now, they don’t have a post on it (neither does TalkLeft or Taylor Marsh) but the comments are all over this. the consensus seems to be:
MoveOn is a biased, pro-Obama, bunch of thugs; and every word Hillary said was true – they violently intimidate people at caucuses everywhere and “will stop at nothing”* to win. oh, and Obama controls the media and is a threat to the American way of life.
so, as is expected, they’re reworking the rest of reality so that this story sounds like good news!
* – a phrase which is heavily weighted in my “You might be reading a crank” system.
Hillary Clinton is a DLC member (an organization that is Democratic in name only). Bashing the base is not only acceptable but required. My hope is that when Hillary finally implodes (or gets dragged off the stage), the influence of the DLC on our party will be over.
“After Kerry’s defeat, the DLC promised to “avoid the circular firing squad” mentality but then quickly broke the promise, reverting to its favorite target: the Democratic base. Instead of labor unions and feminists, the DLC fixated on MoveOn.org and Michael Moore. “We need to be the party of Harry Truman and John Kennedy, not Michael Moore,” the DLC wrote on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, of all places. “What leftist elites smugly imagine is a sophisticated view of their country’s flaws strikes much of America as a false and malicious cartoon,” the DLC’s Will Marshall wrote in Blueprint, the group’s magazine, in a rant worthy of The Weekly Standard. “Democrats should have no truck with the rancid anti-Americanism of the conspiracy-mongering left.” The DLC continued this vitriol into March.
Such attacks put the DLC back on the front page–a fact that speaks to one of its ongoing sources of strength. For Washington journalists, the DLC is an ideal organization, frequently critical and readily accessible. Privately, DLC staffers complain that only controversy will bring coverage. A fat Rolodex, the product of years spent mingling with journalists, gives the DLC an illusion of real power. The New York Times and Washington Post mentioned or quoted the DLC 200 times during the electoral season, forty more mentions than the Club for Growth, a leading player in the right-wing movement.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0304-27.htm
Wait, where’s Jay Jerome to tell us how stupid and immature we are to suckle Obama’s nuts instead of worshipping Clinton’s clear-sighted ordinary-yet-awesomely-hardcore-Americanism? I’m so confused!
NAFTA was a move that was smart for dems. Canada is a problem. It always has been a problem. It takes advantage of Americans and if dems can’t understand that after Bill, it’s going to be going with the next dem.
Colombia makes no sense except for maybe dems screwed up with Farr’s meeting or something and the FARC, drug dealer thing happened. It has Pelosi cutting out free trade as they pass a 50 billion dollar AIDs program for foreign aid. Federal budgets are being extended five years, doubling them during the five years. Five year budgets, huge foreign aid and no free trade? We can’t pay these five year foreign aid give aways unless we have trade. We can’t pay the aid, we’re extended out five years and the economy is going.
Pelosi is bankrupting us with five year doubled foreign aid and agency budgets. No free trade agreements. She then complains about the Lama?
It’s crap like this that only confirms (as if any more confirmation were actually needed) that the whole aim of the Clinton “machine” is focused entirely on attaining political power for themselves, and themselves* alone.
Good of the Party? Feh! Good of the country? Feh! Good for Bill and Hillary? – well, they seem to assume that getting the Clintons back in power IS what’s good for the Party and the nation.
If MoveOn had proclaimed neutrality in the primary, or endorsed Hillary; she would no doubt be praising them to the skies as the True Voice of Democratic Activism: an Obama endorsement? Feh! – Dirty F—-g Hippies, the lot!
Good grief. Six months ago I was leaning Hillary, mainly out of concerns about whether Obama’s motivated base could create a viable enough ground game to win the general, versus Clinton’s presumably preexisting machine. Ideologically I was fine with either.
Those concerns vanished pretty quickly once the primaries started, and I drifted into Obama’s camp by preference–but still liked Hillary and would be happy with her as the nominee.
Now I’m going to have to echo Tony P. upthread: the only thing, and I mean the sole motivating factor, that would get me to vote for Hillary in the general is the fact that she’s the lesser of two evils–she’s an improvement over McBush.
I didn’t change my mind out of sexism, or CDS, or concerns about her ability to do the job. I did it because as the primaries go on, her brand of politics has started to remind me more and more of Bush Republicanism. I don’t mean in terms of ideology–I mean in terms of chutzpah, dishonesty, and utter contempt for those who aren’t aligned with her. I did it because she is objectively hurting the Democratic party. At this point the only way I can logically square her actions is if either she thinks the only way she has even a trivial chance of getting the nom is if she damages Obama’s electability, and doesn’t care if that means he loses the general, or that she’s deliberately trying to tear Obama down so that he loses and she has another shot in 2012.
Nothing else makes sense. And neither budges her from the pantheon in my mind that she now shares with the likes of Ralph Nader, Joe Lieberman, and Zell Miller.
Since she’s so far behind in the math, the legitimacy of Clinton’s campaign rests entirely on electability, hence all the concern-trolling about how Obama can’t win over the “Reagan Democrats.” Yet she’s crapped all over two core elements of the Democratic Party: first African Americans with the Jesse Jackson comments and now the “activist base.”
And the irony is, she was never going to sway the “Reagan Democrats” to her side anyway. To most with a conservative bent, the Clintons are (wrongly!) perceived as wild-eyed liberals or worse. The Clintons pride themselves on their political savvy; they’ve staked HRC’s continued participation in this primary on it. I never really bought that anyway, but now they’ve removed all doubt.
Bruce’s last sentence at 5:49 A.M. is a restatement of Jonathan Schwarz’s Iron Law of Institutions
I think Jon overstates it slightly, but he probably is describing how a great many Democrats (like the Clintons) think.
This is a very minor gripe, but:
Reasons for opposing the invasion of Afghanistan aren’t worth taking seriously. There are, of course, *some* reasons against any war, but none of the reasons against going into Afghanistan were weighty enough to merit the overly-scrupulous clarification above. Treating such things with undue daintiness helps to contribute to the view that Dems are mindless pacifists who will oppose even the most clearly well-justified wars. Among other things, this diminishes the force of our opposition to asinine wars like Iraq.
Not gripin’, just sayin’.
Donald: I was personally paraphrasing Friedrich Hayek, but it’s not like it’s a unique insight.
Reasons for opposing the invasion of Afghanistan aren’t worth taking seriously.
i was against the Afghanistan war for much the same reason I was against the Iraq war: i had no faith that the US would improve things, and didn’t think that the people of Afghanistan deserved to suffer for the actions of people who weren’t Afghani.
clearly that was a baseless and un-serious worry. that’s OK; it’s how i roll.
Bruce, I wasn’t saying you were literally copying Jonathan Schwarz–I just used your comment as an excuse to link to his post.
Winston, the main reason (in my mind at the time) for opposing the war in Afghanistan was the fact (and it’s a fact) that there was a real risk of a massive famine caused by the bombing, which cut off food supplies to some regions. Link
I opposed the Afghan war at the time and decided I was wrong by the end of 2001, when it was clear that the people of Kabul were overjoyed by their liberation (though of course they’d also been overjoyed to have had the warlords driven out years earlier) and when, because the Taliban lines had collapsed, it was clear there wouldn’t be a famine on a massive scale. So the war went much better than I feared, and it did more good than harm. Though perhaps not that much good after all.
But it wasn’t unreasonable in the fall of 2001 to fear a famine that might have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. One read very little about this issue in the mainstream US press and I know because I was looking, but it was a subject of heated debate in the British papers. People in the US pretended to believe that the silly food drops by plane would make a significant difference, when they were negligible in scale.
Another article about the danger of an Afghan famine, this from the NYT in early November. I think this is the one I read with some disgust, because IMO the NYT had not given the issue sufficient prominence until after the danger was averted–
Link
I think it’s time to begin the foundation of a serious third party, aiming to build from local results towards a national base. The DLC clique are as corrupt and elitist as the Republicans. I will not vote for Clinton, nor for anyone associated with her campaign. I don’t see any substantive difference in being abused by Republicans as opposed to Republican-lite. No, I don’t think Clinton would do anything to put a true liberal on the Supreme Court – I am sure she would give us more like Roberts and Alito.
It was time for a serious third party about 108 years ago. It’s been tried multiple times in the US through the 20th century, and the last candidate to make a serious attempt on a national level in the 20th century was rewarded for his success by being unjustly scapegoated for “losing Gore the election”.
I think what you really need is to reform your electoral system: it’s absurd that after at least three elections rigged by one party (and doubt about the 2002 election only because no one was running exit polls) the big discussion in the run-up to the US election is still whether one of the Democratic candidates wears a lapel pin or did the other one once say something foolish in private?
Donald: Oh, no worries. It’s a darned good article to link to. We can all use some more reminders of ways in which all of this is thoroughly predictable, just unusually jerkish manifestations of recurring tendencies.
She’s Lieberman in a pants suit; Nader without the past good deeds.
Reasons for opposing the invasion of Afghanistan aren’t worth taking seriously.
What about the belief that the Administration would go in gangbusters, make a lot of noise and fury, and then promptly forget about it when something shiny caught their eye? I’d say that was pretty damn well worth taking seriously, as history has shown.
yilderim writes:
I think it’s time to begin the foundation of a serious third party, aiming to build from local results towards a national base. The DLC clique are as corrupt and elitist as the Republicans.
Jesurgislac responds:
I think what you really need is to reform your electoral system
I understand the aspirations behind these sentiments, but it seems to me that these tasks are being proposed in ascending order of difficulty rather than descending order.
Problem #1: It is hard work getting a mildly progressive Democratic chosen to be the party’s nominee for President, and then winning in the general election, in the face of resistance from the DLC and the MSM.
Proposed Solution #2: Start a third party from scratch and try to win within the existing electoral system.
Proposed Solution #3: Reform the entire electoral system.
Maybe I’m just looking at this the wrong way, but this conversation reads to me like:
hiker #1:
“Man, it sure is tiring hiking up Mt. Whitney. I wish there were an easier way to do this.”
hiker #2:
“I have a better idea, let’s climb Mt. McKinley.”
hiker #3:
“That wouldn’t work. We need to climb K2.”
AIUI, no third party can really be viable as long as we continue to use this [almost] plurality system, or any other system that has the vote-splitting problem. Though I’m inclined to agree with Jesu that we should probably get our current system actually *working* first…
ThatLeftTurnInABQ, I take your point (though I disagree about whether a viable third party is even possible without reforming the electoral system) but I’d settle for Democratic supporters at least campaigning for their preferred nominee and against John McCain.
I don’t see why we can’t simply call it “voting against John McCain,” or say, “vote for your preferred nominee or against John McCain.”
I’d like it if my preferred candidate were the nominee, but if that’s not in the cards I still plan to vote against the GOP — your phrasing seems to be aligned with the or-I’ll-stay-at-home position that I personally find really inappropriate.
That’s not to say that you advocate that position (I don’t know), but I think it’s important to keep things framed in those terms.
What successes, exactly, are you referring to?
Well, this is kind of… silly…
Hmm. I worry that my cleverly subversive use of the blockquote tag there may have gone slightly awry.
Adam,
If we stop thinking in GOP vs. Dem terms, and think of politics as pitting a faction which prefers a strong executive vs. a faction which prefers a strong legislature, this stuff makes more sense.
Hillary is running as a strong-executive party candidate, Obama as a strong-legislature party candidate. The former will emphasize personal characteristics of the executive and a top-down approach to policy (good policy will flow from a wise executive). The latter will emphasize bottom-up process issues (good policy is negotiated by the stakeholders who all need to be represented).
That is one reason why different people can look at the same debate, and be happy that the candidates are getting ripped over personal issues, while another person is appalled that public policy was left out of the discussion. From the 1st point of view it is the character of the leader which counts the most, and policy is an afterthought. From the 2nd point of view debating the merits of various policies is the whole point of the exercise, not haggling over unimportant trivia regarding the personal character of the leader.
The ABC moderated debate in Philly was this way.
Traditionally the GOP is more of a strong-executive/weak-legislature party, and the Democrats are more of a weak-executive/strong-legislature party. These differences can plausibly be traced all the way back to Charles I and the Parlimentarians of Pym and Cromwell, if Kevin Phillips is to be believed.
Hillary is running as a GOP-style candidate in the Democratic primaries, which explains why she is probably not going to win, but she can still find plenty of people who prefer that style of politics. The cultural divide between the GOP and the Democratic party is being mirrored by internal divisions within just the latter.
The activist base (a) dislikes HRC in disprorportionate amount; and (2) opposed the Afghanistan War in disproportionate numbers.
Why HRC should be faulted for recognizing those two true statements is beyond me.
That’s an inaccurate characterization of the issue.
Personally, I think Moveon’s positions on all things war-related tend toward the reactionary. But I don’t respect the fact that Clinton is willing to pay lip service to them in public while accusing them of voter intimidation in her private meetings with high-dollar donors.
I think that’s a good discussion for Democrats to have, but Clinton’s not engaging in that discussion. Political candidates should be held accountable for taking different position depending on whether the cameras are rolling or not.
Well, JPE, because that’s not what she said. She said MoveOn opposed going into Afghanistan, which is not true. The subset of people who opposed the Afghanistan invasion might indeed be larger among the “activist base” than it is among Democrats as a whole, but opposition to the Afghaninstan invasion doesn’t define the “activist base” by any reasonable measure. Unless you’re trying to paint your opponents as fringe extremists, which is what Clinton was doing.
The activist base (a) dislikes HRC in disprorportionate amount; and (2) opposed the Afghanistan War in disproportionate numbers.
got any data to back up either of those rather remarkable assertions ?
I respectfully disagree. Even accepting that characterization of candidates, a belief in a strong executive is not in tension with a commitment to forthright politics. The personal characteristics of a leader may be more or less relevant depending on your view of the role of the President, but there’s simply no reasonable world where the choice of lapel pins merits more discussion than health care policy.
The bottom line is that no matter how many times you ask a candidate whether their pastor “loves America,” there’s only so much they can say on the issue — ultimately it does come down to a personal judgment. The legitimacy of the issue doesn’t change the fact that there’s only a small amount of substantive discussion that can be had about it, no matter what your view of its political import.
From the 1st point of view it is the character of the leader which counts the most, and policy is an afterthought. From the 2nd point of view debating the merits of various policies is the whole point of the exercise, not haggling over unimportant trivia regarding the personal character of the leader.
I don’t understand. If you are interested in a strong executive, shouldn’t you be more interested in a candidate’s position on issues than if you were focused on a strong legislature? A strong executive voter will expect that the President plays a bigger role in determining policy than a strong legislature voter. Even if you think Clinton is a strong executive candidate and that’s the most important thing in the world to you, you can’t just assume that whatever she decides will be correct…
Also, even if one were interested in character, why would any of the questions discussed at the debate tell us anything about character?
Confused, and dazed.
Reading this thread has been like listening to group of spoiled fraternity and sorority brats repeating the most recent snip of malicious gossip about someone they don’t like on a conference call.
There are two Democratic communities: and your side doesn’t like the other side, and the other side feels the same about you. You share one kind of collective identity, they share another. It’s a fissure that’s widening, and will continue to widen in the future, irregardless of who gets the nomination this time – a cultural and demographic divide that will inevitably cause a major constituency realignment, from Democratic to Republican.
If Obama gets the nomination, a whole new generation of Reagan-Democrats will be abandoning ship. The new Obama ‘party activists’ may indeed be swelling Democratic voter turn out in this election, but as a result, great numbers of traditional Democratic voters are getting ready to move to a new neighborhood. As recently as April 18th, the Quinnipiac pole of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary shows 26% of Clinton supporters switching to McCain if Obama is the nominee – consistent with numerous other poles over the last few months, which showed similar results. And it’s not going to be a one-time protest vote.
It’s neighborhood gentrification: when long-time working-class residents are pushed aside by a yuppie hoard of new arrivals who want to replace the Neighborhood Pub and the Local Bodega with Starbucks and Borders Books and PinkBerrys – the older established demographic first gets angry, and then moves elsewhere, permanently.
Or as Bob Dylan puts it:
Then time will tell just who fell
And who’s been left behind,
When you go your way and I go mine.
“irregardless” isn’t an actual word, jj.
I respectfully disagree. Even accepting that characterization of candidates, a belief in a strong executive is not in tension with a commitment to forthright politics.
The respect is mutual, I greatly admire your comments both with respect to content and form.
Re: the point under debate – the difference between the viewpoints I was describing is over what is prioritized. I’m not advocating here for Flag-pin politics, just trying to point out that I think there is a Mars-Venus quality to these debates such that the assumptions built in to the other side’s way of seeing are so different from ours that they seem totally irrational to us. I’m not so confident that a totally irrational approach to politics would have been as stubbornly successful at persisting in the way that this politics of personal characteristics has been. I think something deeper is at work here than just an ADHD electorate whose minds have been addled from watching too much TV. Thus I’m trying to understand on what basis Flag-pin politics would make sense.
If you see the legislature as the fount of public policy, then the most essential characteristics of the executive are that they act to maintain the integrity of the legislative process and provide appropriate guidance and direction to the debates which will occur within that arena. Their views on public policy are the starting point for an honest and substantive debate which is expected to produce the final result, and which may differ noticeably from the starting point. In this view a commitment to the integrity, transparency and accountability of the process of debate are the virtues to be sought in the executive, and personal trivia are just that – trivial.
A partisan of the weak executive / strong legislature won’t care as much about these trifles, because in their view it is not appropriate for the executive to unilaterally dictate policy, but to supervise the process which is used to establish policy. This requires a different set of virtues, including a not excessively large ego and an ability to sympathize with multiple points of view in order to broker compromises between them, but note that these very qualities would seem like liabilities rather than assets from the other point of view.
On the other hand if you see the executive as the fount of public policy, then it is essential that we obtain a wise and strong executive. Otherwise personal flaws in the executive will lead directly to foolish or weak policies. In this view “a forthright politics” cannot compensate for a flawed executive because good intentions are no substitute for real strength, including a stubborn determination to “stick up for what they think is right”, and an empathic connection with the people whose interests are at stake. Regarding the latter, symbolic tokens of shared culture, like guns, bowling and flag pins, will loom large.
In a democracy this point of view is monarchism in disguise, with elections rather than hereditary birthright being used to select the monarch, and the “throne” being occupied for a shorter term than was usual in the old days. Someone who subscribes to a neo-monarchist view of politics could very well feel that the choice of lapel pins merits more discussion than health care policy, because the policy in question is something they expect to be determined at the discretion of the “monarch” once they are in power, so trifles which give you a psychological window into the character of the would-be King/Queen are not so trifling after all.
If your conceptual model of government is legislature-centric, then it makes sense to vote with your hopes, because policy will be negotiated so you want to ask for as much as you can, knowing that you may not get what you want but it never hurts to ask. If your conceptual model of government is neo-monarchist, then it makes sense to vote with your fears, because there is no recourse for bad outcomes obtained by choosing the wrong person, if the transfer of power is imagined to be one-way with no take-backsies and little negotiation afterwards.
One side votes with their hopes because they expect a contingent outcome driven by bottom-up politics, the other side votes with their fears, because they expect to have to bear the consequences of top-down decision making.
I don’t understand. If you are interested in a strong executive, shouldn’t you be more interested in a candidate’s position on issues than if you were focused on a strong legislature? A strong executive voter will expect that the President plays a bigger role in determining policy than a strong legislature voter.
Turbulence,
“When do you know a politician is lying?”
“When their lips are moving”
How many times have you heard that joke? I’ve heard that sentiment more times than the sum of all other partisan political stances combined. From the stand point of someone who thinks this is the case, policy is opaque – it doesn’t matter what the candidates say (they’re just telling you what you want to hear).
Under these circumstances, it makes a great deal of rational sense to opt for the candidate who you feel will be more empathic towards you and the group you belong to (using cultural symbols like the flag), because you really do not know what they will do until after they have been granted power.
If you are electing a person rather than a set of policies, then you had better make sure the person you pick is a member of your tribe, or else expect to get screwed. Given the history of US politics and the frequency with which policy driven movements have been unscrupulously abandoned by the candidates they put into power, this makes a good deal of sense.
This imperative is reinforced if you think the executive is strong (because the stakes are higher) than if you think the executive is weak (vs. a strong legislature). The stronger the executive, the more tribalism matters.
One side votes with their hopes because they expect a contingent outcome driven by bottom-up politics, the other side votes with their fears, because they expect to have to bear the consequences of top-down decision making.
I think your perspective on Hillary is interesting here, but I’m not sure it’s a strong argument FOR her. Perhaps you didn’t intend it to be, I’m not sure.
My reasoning is that to a large extent you’ve characterized the two campaigns. The problem for Hillary in this light is twofold:
1) hers has largely been a disaster
2) she hasn’t seemed willing to take responsibility for much of any of that, as in fact this post by hilzoy demonstrates
On the other hand, it’s hard to characterize Obama’s campaign as anything but an incredibly successful operation to date. Moreover, many people see him as a much more appealing head-of-state compared to Hillary.
I’m not sure I agree with ThatLeftTurnInABQ on strong executive vs. strong legislative but taking that as a hypothetical, wouldn’t people who favor a strong executive highly value competence and character in a candidate? Especially now, with a near-tyrant with an approval rating hovering around 30% occupying the office of President?
We’ve had quite a bit of discussion of Hillary Clinton’s lack of management strength (the health care debacle back in the 90s, the “inevitability” campaign that failed today). People who favor a strong executive and yet support Hillary Clinton must have a cognitive dissonance problem around now.
A partisan of the weak executive / strong legislature won’t care as much about these trifles, because in their view it is not appropriate for the executive to unilaterally dictate policy, but to supervise the process which is used to establish policy.
The alternative here really confuses me: does anyone seriously believe that Clinton would unilaterally dictate policy to congress, or that if she did that it would be anything but a total disaster? I mean, monarchies are great, but executives in our system of government can’t govern effectively without cajoling support from congress. Or are you trying to suggest that such structural issues remain unknown to the neo-monarchists?
Under these circumstances, it makes a great deal of rational sense to opt for the candidate who you feel will be more empathic towards you and the group you belong to (using cultural symbols like the flag), because you really do not know what they will do until after they have been granted power.
That makes sense to a degree, but candidates can lie about empathy and tribal membership just as easily as they can lie about policy positions. And if you believe that politicians lie continuously, then shouldn’t you believe they’re lying when they tell you how much they empathize with you and how similar their identity is to yours?
“If Obama gets the nomination, a whole new generation of Reagan-Democrats will be abandoning ship.”
But not you, Jay Jerome. You jumped ship some time back in the 20th century. You’re the guy who wrote on June 16, 2007 at 12:17 AM, for instance, that you had “stepped back from” “the liberal knee-jerks of perception,” which was:
Alas that it’s been quite a long time since the Democrats lost you. Alas.
“As recently as April 18th, the Quinnipiac pole of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary shows 26% of Clinton supporters switching to McCain if Obama is the nominee – consistent with numerous other poles over the last few months, which showed similar results.”
Terribly committed Democrats, clearly, if they prefer McCain to Obama.
Alas, that you’re always announcing how Democrats are leaving the party because things aren’t going your way — you, the fellow who will vote for McCain/Powell over Obama — when not long ago you were complaining about people “undermin[ing] Democratic chances in the upcoming presidential elections” with their criticisms of a Democratic candidate.
You also observed that “Those posting here in favor of Obama […] and as far as Democrats go, are tilted more to the left then to the center or right, where more Hillary supporters reside.”
So you’ll vote for McCain/Powell over Obama, if the ticket is Obama without Clinton, you’ll “sit out the presidential election,” you want the Democrats to go to the right, hate “pie-in-the-sky latte-liberals,” think liberals “are as blockheaded as conservatives, maybe more so,” but you’re so concerned about the state of the Democratic Party.
I’m touched. Truly touched.
Almost as touched as when you were desperately concerned that Obama was a “Republican mole.”
Ah, Jay: never change.
Of course, the Reagan Democrats weren’t exactly good Democrats, either. They’re usually called “Republicans.”
Jake,
See my 6:23 pm reply to Turbulence.
In a nutshell:
Cynicism (“They only say what we want to hear”) = opaque policy
(you really do not know what the policy will be until you get it, and by then it’s too late to do anything about it).
Tribalism = I really need somebody on my side.
Strong executive = the stakes are higher.
Combine those three factors together, and tell me what you come up with.
Combine those three factors together, and tell me what you come up with.
Well, perhaps I’m being dense here or just having trouble making sense of your equations, but I don’t see how that succinctly addresses my point.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ,
I think that the distinction you’re drawing is valid, I’m just disputing that the differences is based on faith in the executive or legislature. It seems to me that you’re simply talking whether people vote based on intuitions about character as opposed to the candidates’ statements of intended policies.
Because the executive generally has more independence than legislators, the question might be more significant in that case, but I don’t see why anything would turn on that distinction — after all, the executive isn’t exempt from the need to achieve consensus from the legislature, their constituency, administrative agencies, or their own advisors.
More to the point, I don’t think that this is really the issue here. The problem with Clinton saying different things in public than she says in private is that it prevents voters from even know what her policies will be in the first place. Regardless of whether she governed by consensus or by decree, knowing what her policies will even be is still a precondition to making the decisions you’re discussing.
Put simply, issues of public accountability come before structural accountability. Politicians aren’t paragons of honesty even in the best of times, but if there’s no consequences to doubletalk at all, then it really doesn’t matter what the decisionmaking processes are.
I just came back from my county convention in Washington state. There were about one thousand attendees (I think. I’m guessing.) Enough to fill the bleachers in the junior high school gym to overflowing.
The governor and our state representative came and gave speeches about unity and the importance of everyone getting behind the condidtge. Gregoire is a super for Obama. I think Dicks is a super for HRC.
A nice young man gave the Clinton speech. He was way better in tone and content than she ever is and included a unity message. The Obama speaker took tow shots at HRC, one about her support for the war and one about the Moveon quote, which I wish he hadn’t taken. He did include a unity message.
Then we split up and chose delegates for th nexgt level.
But here’s the thing :L although JJ seems to think that there is some kind of class war going on in the Dems, the ninety people who stood up to make one minute pitches to become Obama delegates to stste convention were almost universally either veterans or union members. Two were Iraq vets. Two were wives of Iraq vets. One was a former Republican. There were union jackets and hats everywhere.
Judging by appearances the uppoer middle class ones were all the ladies who got up and went to the HRC caucus.
I think t he genertification thing is mostly hooey. The big difference between HRC supporters and Obama supporters is that HRC supporters tend to either not know or be in denial of how she has run her campaign. Also I think the indentity politics is a bigger element in her support than his. Another difference is that some peolpe imagine that HRC will get revenge on the Republicans and Obama won’t . (Acvtually netiher will but Obama is the one who is on record as being willing to pursue prosecutions) Then there’s the experience issue although I would think that HRC herslef has turned that sales pitch into the punch line of a joke. Some of her support comes from the assumption that Bill was a good PResident therefore she will be too. ANyway none of this is related to class.
BTW this county, although fast growing is semi rural and most of the people at the convention were from small towns around here (small being the only kind of town we got!)
If any HRC supporters stay home in Nov it wil be the some of the identity politics supporters. I don’t think there is a new generation of Reagan Democrats, either. Younger Dems don’t have the baggage that burdened older Democrats who were suceptible to RR’s get=something-for-nothing by blaming-everything-on-blacks message.
I posted a comment a while back, and subsequently wrote to the kitty and all asking it to get released from the trap of the you know what. This is just a reminder that it would be nice.
The problem is that when the Clintons were in power they had the DLC – a right of center democratic group they were part of. Democratic politics were about being like republicans and gotcha politics.
For 20 years that is how things were.
But, those years were quiet years when things were pretty even keel. Not scary like now.
You could play trivial pursuit politics.
But, after Bush and what is going on now, people are scared.
They need answers and not distractions. Game playing is over. Gotcha is trivial.
What people want is a president who is smart, can deal with problems and get things done.
Given Hillary’s love and embrace of the old politics of another era, tone deaf to what is important to people and mud slinging and divisiveness, she would be about distractions and unable to accomplish things.
Obama is a unifying person who is able to build from scratch a year ago and run a huge organization effectively, he looks like someone who can accomplish the things needed.
People don’t want gotcha. They want a serious debate and thinking. And it’s about responsibility.
Clinton will throw the very base she desperately needs to blame for her own shortcomings. There is no taking responsibility and this is troubling to many.
Sure it is, Adam — it’s a collequal nonstandard adverb in common usage since early in the 20th century, and is fairly widespread, not only in common speech, but in edited prose as well. In usage, it’s no different from other words with redundant affixes like unravel and debone — but is a word that raises the hackles of putzes with intellectual pretentions (ie: Obama-progressives)and delusions of intellectual accomplishment, who often snobbishly point out, as you did, that there is no such word, when in fact, irregardless of what you mistakenly statedobviously there is.
Sure it is, Adam — it’s a collequal nonstandard adverb in common usage since early in the 20th century, and is fairly widespread, not only in common speech, but in edited prose as well.You mean “colloquial,” right?
How embarrassing that you simply regurgitated a line from WikiPedia (“Interestingly words with similarly-redundant meanings have gained widespread acceptance. Examples include words such as “debone” and “unravel”) without bothering to verify it.
Those are, humorously enough, both perfectly cromulent words — “unravel,” in fact, is about 400 years old. Of course, even the M-W page you cited points out — correctly — that “irregardless” is nonstandard usage (i.e., incorrect). But don’t let me stop you. I was just trying to help.
You mean “pretensions,” right?
You know, this may come as a surprise to you, but not everything is about politics — some things are just stupid.
Typepad mangled that link, because it hates etymology and puppies.
Oh, I’m sorry, you actually probably cribbed this
from here:
I apologize.
The Clintons have a strange philosophical mix. They pretty clearly define themselves as 60s counterculturals (I saw an old video of a long haired Hillary Clinton earnestly saying how the people were tired of lying politicians and she reminded me of Joan Baez nattering about overthrowing the patriarchy and re-educating the people). Honestly, just as people who came of age during the depression felt poor no matter how wealthy they eventually became, there are some people who came of age during the 60s who just can’t admit that they are now part of the establishment. I’ve worked with a few of these, anyway.
And yet, for having come of age among idealists, the Clintons are very utilitarian. This mix of professed idealism with objective evidence of realpolitik can be infuriating. As disorienting as it must be to have come of age in the 60s and no longer be considered the agent of change, eventually, the narrative had to move on. While I find it kind of painful to watch, I try not to let it anger me too much.
Speaking as someone who earned a living from time to time over three decades as a professional editor and who thus has no insecurities about either his ability to speak to such matters, or his ability to laugh if anyone tries to use an argument from authority on me, but I have to say that the game of trying to make people look silly by accusing them of — heaven forfend — engaging in an “incorrect” usage, or by pointing out where they’ve misspelled a word, or engaged in a slight solecism, is utterly cheap, silly, and demonstrates little more than that someone has a misplaced sense of what actually undermines an argument.
Speaking as someone who earned a living from time to time, over three decades, as a professional editor, and who thus has no insecurities about either his ability to speak to such matters, or his ability to laugh if anyone tries to use an argument from authority on him, I have to say that the game of trying to make people look silly by accusing them of — heaven forfend — engaging in an “incorrect” usage, or by pointing out where they’ve misspelled a word, or engaged in a slight solecism, is utterly cheap, silly, and demonstrates little more than that someone has a misplaced sense of what actually undermines an argument.
Throwing in “I was just trying to help” is simply obnoxious.
It should be obvious that I don’t find Jay Jerome’s professions of concern for the Democratic Party to be terribly convincing, and I don’t think much of his — let’s call it “analysis,” shall we? — of the Clinton/Obama dynamics, but whether Jay Jerome is ever sloppy in his phrasing, or misspells or misuses a word, or — oh, the revelation that he must know no more is less than full — cribs an explanation from Wikipedia, doesn’t strike me as particularly relevant or significant, but YMMV.
And, yeah, if Jay Jerome wants to be colloquial, why, exactly, shouldn’t he be? Are we grading people here on their prose style, now?
“April 20, 2008 at 12:38 AM”
What the heck? I didn’t post that. It seems to be part of my first go-round at commenting, somehow posted when something or other happened to the browser, while I was in the middle of writing my comment.
I didn’t post it, drat it. It’s just part of what I was in the middle of writing. Grr. Where’s the delete option?
I thought that was pretty clearly my intent the second time around. That’s because — as you’ll note upthread — the first time I pointed it out, I was actually just trying to help, and Jay decided that he just haaad to shoehorn it into another discussion about that craaaaazy Obamamaniac elitism.
I mean, if he wants to get defensive about all this horrible anti-colloquial snobbisheriferous pretensiosity despite that he doesn’t even know how the words are spelled, then (as a former editor myself) I’m certainly not above the cheap shot riposte. Since he could have easily avoided it simply by not giving into the compulsion to shoot his mouth off, I confess that I don’t exactly feel an upwelling of guilt about it.
Let it simply stand as an abject lesson in both poor usage and in the risks of using Google as a stand-in for actual knowledge of a topic. Perhaps next time Jay will display a bit more humility and say something along the lines of what you did, Gary, rather than overreach his Google-fu in an ill-advised attempt at scoring snark points.
That’s somewhat my fault I confess. Sometimes they’re just so cute to feed!
Frankly, I think Hillary is trending ever closer to the Joe Lieberman wing of the Democratic Party. I once considered the Clintons of the 90’s to be Republican-lite; now there’s no “lite” about them Her less than competent management of her campaign, and her bitterness towards all who don’t support her, are very revealing. Soon she may want to join Zell and Joe at the Republican National Convention. She’s running a Republican campaign…. desperate and dirty. I’m sick of her. Time to turn the page.
The difference between voting on a candidates’s ‘character’ and their stated policies is also related to how uncertain the future is going to be. If you think that the future will be fairly certain, and the big problems of today will be the big problems of tomorrow, then it makes sense to vote for the person with the best current policies. If you think that things may change very abruptly, you are more likely to want the candidate who you think will be able to cope when the Martians invade/the Rapture happens/the tsunami hits. Then voting for a president with ‘character’ makes more sense: someone who can adapt quickly and appropriately to immense change. (How you decide on who has this ‘character’ is an entirely different matter).
Howdy from scenic Zurich airport!
Also: I love the idea of characterizing an actual audiotape as “malicious gossip”.
That is all. 😉
And speaking of repulsive:
I thank Hilzoy for releasing this response to Jay Jerome from the spam trap it’s been in for hours.
I thank Hilzoy for releasing this response to Jay Jerome from the spam trap it’s been in for hours.
I think that it is too early to say that a third party can’t work. The one certainty is that creating one only for the general election doesn’t work. That’s not the same thing as a longertmerm project,starting at local level, and building up over time. I think this might work, and is worth trying. The Republicans are corrupt and vicious, the Democrats corrupt and hypocritical. Given those choices, I’d say a third party build over time is worth the effort. And no, it is not the same as seeking an easier way. The easy way is doing nothing – which is presumably what leftturn would prefer.
I don’t see why we need a third party (at least, I don’t see why those of us who are Democrats do.) We are taking back the party we have. It’s conservatives (in Sebastian’s sense, the one some people say has lost its meaning) who need a party to belong to and don’t have one.
Hillary Clinton says this stuff. But she is losing. Democrats are energized; we have new models of fundraising that greatly diminish the influence of traditional donors; and we have some very good people. We are midway in a transformation of the party. Why would we bail?
I don’t see why we need a third party
People who are perfectly happy to be represented by a party of the far right don’t need a third party: they’re got the Republicans.
People who are perfectly happy to be represented by a party of the moderate right don’t need a third party: they’ve got the Democrats.
Everyone who would like to be represented by a party of the left has no party to vote for in the US: they’re stuck with either not voting, because there is no party that will represent their interests, or with voting for a moderately right-wing party in order to prevent the far-right fascists getting in.
A similar situation existed for French voters between April 21 2002 and May 5 2002, as a large number of voters gradually and with Gallic venom realized they were stuck with voting for Jacques Chirac, whom they loathed, or permitting Jean-Marie Le Pen to get in as President. The French Left reacted both practically and eloquently: Chirac won by a landslide, with the most popular campaigning slogan for him: Votez escro, pas fascho. (Vote for a crook, not a fascist.)
But that dilemma is one left-wing American voters are faced with at every election: sit back and let the fascist get in, or vote for a moderately right-wing candidate?
The moderate right are moderately well-served by this, so long as the left are content not to be represented but to keep pulling the Democratic party to the middle.
Everyone who would like to be represented by a party of the left has no party to vote for in the US
Not in Presidential elections, anyway, and not often in any federal election, though I’m aware of at least one Socialist in the Senate. Sorry, I should have been clearer.
The Republicans are corrupt and vicious, the Democrats corrupt and hypocritical. Given those choices, I’d say a third party build over time is worth the effort.
Intriguing. What is it that causes the Democratic and Republican parties to be corrupt exactly? Is it some special property of their names? Or were those particular parties cursed by an evil wizard?
Alternatively, it might be the case that any organization that amasses significant power will be corrupted and that we must constantly work to detect and eliminate corruption in all such institutions. Doing so is no doubt less fun than dreaming of a perfect party filled only with perfect people that won’t suffer any of the problems that these old and smelly parties do.
Random thoughts:
Magistra has a good point about character being an important concern among those who see the future as uncertain. I’m one of those people myself, since I fully expect the next four years to be as full of unexpected weirdness as the last four, and the four before that. It’s why I place a great deal of weight on a candidate’s ability to listen to disputing recommendations, acknowledge changes of heart and outright mistakes, disperse authority comfortably, reward competence and punish incompetence in staff, and like that.
Likewise, the policy stance I’m most interested in is foresight and prevention. The hallmark of the Bush/Cheney administration is tyrannical overreaction justified by initially incompetent preparation. Clinton’s campaign has too much of that same vibe, of getting ugly in response to situations that could have been prepared for but weren’t. Obama’s history of concern with matters from nuclear nonproliferation to avian flu and his demonstrated ability to stand firm in the face of stupid junk suggests to me a presidency that would have fewer occasions or felt need to grab at emergency anything. Even when, as is inevitable, the actual crises don’t have much to do with what the administration had been preparing for – the habit of preparation is crucial in crises.
In more certain-to-me times, I probably would give more weight to specific policy proposals and be less concerned about attitude as long as competence was there.
Third Parties in the US:
The major problem with 20th century third-party efforts is that they ignored important lessons from their predecessors and rivals. Somehow it became common wisdom that a bid for the presidency would make a bully platform. But it doesn’t, not in the face of an even moderately coordinated corporate-driven media.
The successful approach is the one the Religious Right used, starting in the ’70s: run for local offices, often concealing your more extreme views, and get entrenched in city councils, school boards, and the like. Build on that up toward the state level, and from there push for the national legislature, which remains the center of authority for a lot of matters even in this age of strong executives.
One of the crucial lessons of the Clinton and Bush administrations is that winning the White House isn’t enough if Congress is sufficiently against you. It takes a compliant Congress to let a president make really significant changes on many fronts, and an isolated candidate of an upstart party wouldn’t have that…unless the ground has been prepared. The Religious Right was getting set for someone like Bush thirty years ago; people who’d like an actual left-wing president thirty years from now should be organizing for school boards and city councils now.
They should, of course, also have as prominent figureheads people who aren’t labor abusers, liars, inclined to toady to Republican doners, and not given to inflicting needless pain on my friends. But even a decent human being and moral campaigner wouldn’t be able to accomplish much that Nader hasn’t, given the same focus on the presidency.
Intriguing. What is it that causes the Democratic and Republican parties to be corrupt exactly? Is it some special property of their names? Or were those particular parties cursed by an evil wizard?
I think the idea is to get more real competition out there. With only 2 parties, each only has to be as noncorrupt as the other; the more parties, the more pressure to be the best and not merely the better.
To be fair, I think any political party that’s been in power for a certain number of years is pretty much bound to have become corrupt – certainly, corrupt by comparison to when they first took power: how corrupt depends on how strongly political corruption is policed.
A country where there are only two options, where D and R (or X and Y, or C and L) simply exchange being in power for being in opposition, with reasonable surety that after a few years in opposition they will be in power again, is a country where political corruption is likely not to be policed as strongly as it will be in countries where this equable arrangement does not hold true: where politicians are strongly motivated to police each other’s behavior.
This applies to the UK, too, though not as strongly as it does to the US: and the self-governing countries within the UK, where the two-party/first-past-the-post system of government has been alleviated, have noticeably stronger systems of policing corruption – and noticeably more representative government, too, even though Scotland’s last election fell over a bit due to electronic vote-counting and ballot redesign.
concerning “Hamas for Obama”: Who will bet against Osama bin Laden also “endorsing” Obama and the media (remote controlled by GOP scripts) using that as an important reason to reject the Dems in favor of the Son of Cain?
These pseudo-endorsements have been quite successful in triggering Pawlovian reflexes in the past.
So, how do we get the FLDS to endorse JMcC ;-)?
This is an excerpt from the Great Orange Satan.The Clintons Need to Get Out of this Race.
by icebergslim [Subscribe]
Sat Apr 19, 2008 at 07:38:19 PM PDT
icebergslim’s diary :: ::
I have been working on tomorrow’s This Week With Barack Obama and decided to go over to Huffington Post.
I don’t know if this has been diaried, but it just solidified everything for me about Bill and Hillary Clinton and the depths and lows they will get to destroy a democratic colleague, only for the end result being in their favor.
Tom Edsall has an article up on how the Clinton Union Backer is distributing to union leaders activities of the 70s Weather Underground group.
The document – a three-page emailed essay by Rick Sloan, communications director for the International Association of Machinists as Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) — takes both literary and political license to outline what Sloan believes would be the thrust of a hypothetical Republican campaign against Obama focusing on his tangential connection to Ayers and Dohrn.
The goal of the essay appears to be to discredit Obama as the prospective Democratic presidential nominee.
In the article Edsall has it outlined that this information has a link to the FBI Freedom Information website. This information gives details of this group’s activity back in the 70s.
Basically, this is a scare tactic to make us afraid of the GOP using this information against Barack Obama. We all know that Bill Ayers live in the Hyde Park community, on the south side of Chicago in the University of Chicago area. We know that Barack and Ayers have sat on a board together, frequent community event together, casual acquaintances, etc. To try to equate the doings of this organization of the 60s, 70s to Obama is laughable and totally ridiculous.
The time has come. Hillary Clinton needs to get out of this race. It is apparent that her intentions are not for the Democratic Party, but only for herself.
I remember when Bill Clinton’s former mistress Gennifer Flowers had that press conference. Remember? Remember how we rallied behind Bill Clinton? Remember when we said what happens between a married couple is none of our business? Remember? We trusted the Clintons at face value. We, Democrats chose him as our nominee. Battle scar and all.
Then the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, believing President Clinton that he did not have sexual relations with that woman, only to retract his statement and admit the affair. Remember, Democrats when we had to defend him, the Oval Office, his behavior? Remember?
Well, the time has come to stop defending the Clintons.
I’m really sick of people making excuses for her.
I had a converstaion with my neighbor about HRC’s tactics. my neighbor is actually a Obama supporter (bullied inot it by me) but she has that bone deep visceral need to defend the woman candidate at all costs that I see in Jerylyn and some other HRC supporters. No matter what example fo nefarious HRC behavior I give her she always rationalizes it away: women have to try harder, politics is always like that Obama is doing it too even if she can’t think of any examples.
It’s a misinterpetation of feminism: defend the womwan no matter what!
My neighbor wil vote Dem in the end as will, I beleive, most to the female identity supporters of HRC, but the irrational feeling of victimiation will probably linger on.
The weird thing is how oblivious the people who think this way are to the problems of a black man in politics.
All thisis sort of in reponse to JJ upthread who imagnes a revolution of young Reagan Dems. There maybe a split in the party of people who can’t tolerate the idea of boting for a black man–i don’t know. The vocal split is female identiy voters. My guess is that people who won’t vote for a black man aren’t people who are very inclined in the end to vote Dem at all. In any case this fall they will have a choice of voting for a big government pro-special interst multimillionaire who presents himslef as one of the boys or a genuine populist from the lower middle calls wh is half balck. If class is the deciding factor they’ll go for Obama.
I think the genertification thing is mostly hooey.
Same here. Especially if the comparison is between Clinton and Obama.
Are we grading people here on their prose style, now?
God, I hope not.
I don’t see why we need a third party
Multiple parties can work in a parliamentary system.
In our system, if there were three or more serious contenders and noone got a majority of the electoral vote, the election would (IIRC) end up being decided by the House. We could easily end up with Presidents who received quite small percentages of the popular vote.
If you thought 2000 was a mess, imagine President X, who received 25% of the popular vote, placed in office by 50% plus one of the House. That would be a President who would be able to do exactly nothing.
Thanks –
“That would be a President who would be able to do exactly nothing.”
Better than what we have now.
Maybe with a left party we’d have a country where some topics weren’t permanently relegated to the sidelines, or worse, constantly lied about even by the so-called progressives .
Not that I’m supporting Nader-style insurgencies. I think what Bruce said in his 3:50 post is correct. I just don’t think there’s anything particularly good about the two-party system, though if the Obama supporters (not Obama, but his supporters) manage to pull the Democrats to the left, I won’t yearn so much for a third party.
How does Jay Jerome explain the steady flow of Obama endorsements from prominent red-state Democrats? Also the apparent lack of response from the allegedly offended subjects of his “bitter” remarks?
Hilzoy, it sounds nice to say “we are taking back the party” – but exactly what do you mean in concrete terms? Right now, the evidence is that a good part of the party does not want to be “taken back”, and may well be able to block all efforts in this direction. The answer is not to tilt a little to the left, but to admit that the husk of the Democratic party is rotten, and to start building something better, on real democratic principles.
yilderim writes:
I’d say a third party build over time is worth the effort. And no, it is not the same as seeking an easier way. The easy way is doing nothing – which is presumably what leftturn would prefer.
No, I wasn’t advocating doing nothing. I think it is easier to work within the existing two party system, to try to move one of the two major parties in the direction of what we think is better policy, than to create a 3rd party. Not because it is easy to do the former, but because it is very, very hard to do the latter.
The last third party to succeed at promoting itself to top rank in US politics was the mid-19th cen. Republican party. I submit that the party political scene today is less volatile than it was during the early to mid- 19th cen. I could see the point of working on building a third party if one of the two major parties was showing signs of major instability and incipient breakup. I don’t see that right now.
Bruce Baugh’s comment at 3:50 am points out a more recent precedent for taking over a major party from the inside. Do you think the RR would have enjoyed more influence or less, if they had opted to split from the GOP and form a third party sometime in the last couple of decades?
I also agree with Turbulence’s comment:
Intriguing. What is it that causes the Democratic and Republican parties to be corrupt exactly? Is it some special property of their names? Or were those particular parties cursed by an evil wizard?
Alternatively, it might be the case that any organization that amasses significant power will be corrupted and that we must constantly work to detect and eliminate corruption in all such institutions. Doing so is no doubt less fun than dreaming of a perfect party filled only with perfect people that won’t suffer any of the problems that these old and smelly parties do.
In my admittedly very limited view, this is a crooked-timber problem. Parties are made out of people. People are fallible. A hypothetical third party seems more attractive because our imagination allows us to populate it with “good people” and thus avoid the problem that power tends to corrupt. I am skeptical of the idea that a third party which actually succeeds at taking and holding power will remain any less corrupt than what we’ve already got now.
The answer is not to tilt a little to the left, but to admit that the husk of the Democratic party is rotten, and to start building something better, on real democratic principles.
yilderim,
In my experience the reason why the Democratic party is not further to the left is that the US population is broadly center-right in outlook. How are you going to win elections running on a platform that is to the left of the current Democratic party? And if the point isn’t to win, but to move the terms of the debate, how are you going to attract attention from an MSM which is determined to marginalize all left-wing viewpoints? How, for example, would you get a candidate from the left up onto the stage in a presidential debate, so their viewpoint can be heard?
Look what happened to John Edwards in this primary season. He was on stage, and still didn’t draw any attention.
At the grass roots level it makes more sense to work on third party efforts, since there you have more retail politics and less MSM involvement. But what can a third party accomplish at the grass roots level that you cannot accomplish with a caucus or other sub-organizational group within the existing party? The DLC would be an example of this approach (albeit from the other side of the ideological spectrum).
ThatLeft, as I said above, you start at local level and build from there. Yes, it takes time, but local politics is the best way of demonstrating competence, honesty and the fact that you can get something done. If we follow your view, then we might as well give up on any sort of progressive politics, since the center-right must, according to you, constitute a majority forever. What one accomplishes by building from the local up is precisely what needs to be achieved – an escape from the corrupt national level parties that rely on drawing you into a caucus or other collaborative structure. This doesn’t have to mean becoming radically socialist, but it would allow for the development of a solid, effective progressive agenda. You have to educate people out of their brainwashed state, and you can do this locally. Change enough local mindsets, piece by piece, and you gradually shift the national mindset.
My own preference, by the way, is that some people work on reforming the Democratic Party and others work simultaneously on building a new left-wing party. We need both, I think, and there’s no real way to predict how serious steps at either venture would change the landscape. (I suspect something similar is needed for the Republicans but I don’t consider myself well-qualified to pronounce on the subject.) Neither activity requires a monopoly on spirited involvement, after all, and one of the key meta-tasks, so to speak, is getting more people involved.
Jay Jerome: Nice Bob Dylan quote, but I really doubt that that is right. here’s why:
There might be cultural differences between Democrats, but as many people have pointed out there aren’t that many stark policy differences between the two candidates.
Contrast this to what is happening over on the Republican side, where you have paleoconservatives making a coalition with evangelical Christians. These people don’t really agree on all that much. Mostly, they are united by how much they despise liberals.
I think there is a much greater chance of long-term disaffection and fissure on the right than on the left.
I don’t understand how Jerome isn’t violating the posting rules when he comes up with things like “putzes with intellectual pretentions (ie: Obama-progressives) and delusions of intellectual accomplishment.”
He is pretty clearly talking about the person who made a comment about ‘irregardless’. He veils it by using the plural, so that it seems like it is describing a group rather than an individual. But there is no there there. And there isn’t much more to it than a straightforward insult. And it is obviously meant to be incendiary.
It is a cheap tactic, and I don’t know why the blog’s admins let him get away with it.
And it is obviously meant to be incendiary.
as is everything he writes. he’s a troll.
I understand the purpose of the posting rules regarding inappropriate language and personal attacks, but I ask that everyone be a tolerant as possible unless a comment is clearly across the line. Diversity of viewpoint is a real asset on a political blog and once lost is not easily regained. Please don’t chase people away, especially those who push back against what they perceive to be the group consensus, without very good cause.
hilzoy: Also: I love the idea of characterizing an actual audiotape as “malicious gossip”.
And I too love the idea that all the malicious gossip that followed the release of the Pamela Anderson sex tape in gossip columns by gossip columnists and gossip reporters wasn’t really malicious gossip because it was on an actual videotape as opposed to a hypothetical videotape.
Alas and alack – you seem to believe party affiliation is like membership in the Mafia: no defections; once you vote Democratic, you’ve taken an implicit loyalty oath that you’ll be a Democratic for life. Or else!
About a third of American voters now consider themselves ‘unaffiliated” Independents. Like me, many of them jumped from long association with one of the two major parties because of disappointment with party policies or candidates, or to allow more flexibility to vote for a particular person, and not blindly vote in lockstep with the party line.
You apparently see that as political blasphemy: “Alas that it’s been quite a long time since the Democrats lost you. Alas.”
Woe-begone misery: I’ve gone over to the non-affiliated “dark side” of the American electorate, those who chose from column A or column B, depending on the menu of choices available, and don’t stick to the prix fixe party line!
I do have ‘professions of concern for the Democratic Party,” Gary, but those concerns are similar to ones I’d have for an airline I chose to fly from New York to Los Angeles. I want to be convinced the pilots they assign to the flight can fly the plane competently. In other words, I have more loyalty to my own safety than to the Airline. And if it comes to a choice between McCain-Powell as pilot and co-pilot on GOP Airways, and Obama-Generic on Donkey Airways, McCain-Powell would be a better choice to fly the plane. They’ve been there, done that. And to passengers boarding the plane (perspective voters) they have the demeanor of pilots who have safely flown and landed planes before: Obama, on the other hand, seems more like the friendly steward who takes you through the safety procedures, then serves you microwaved lunch and soft drinks.
I’m not alone in this perception, you know: as it stands now, even without a VP on the ticket, McCain is ahead in the polls:
And though I hate to take the wind out of your sails (you’re irresistible when you’re indignant) the chances of Powell getting on the Republican ticket are somewhere between nil and naught – he’s got a better shot at becoming Hillary’s V.P. – which would be a good way for her to recover a portion of the disgruntled black vote if Obama doesn’t win the nomination) – so chances are I won’t be able to vote McCain-Powell, but will probably just sit out the presidential vote, and concentrate on local candidates and issues (I think my neighborhood City Council representative is up for reelection, and I’ll do my civic duty and vote for him).
Hillary Clinton reportedly said, “screw them” about Southern white voters who contributed to the Republican victory in 1996. That’s twelve years ago, folks, and in the immediate aftermath of a very disappointing off-year election. To use a reported quote that old and out of context as a sign of her contempt for voters is just terribly lame. If we want to find unfair use of a candidate’s comments, this would be an excellent example.
To use a reported quote that old and out of context as a sign of her contempt for voters is just terribly lame.
I’d grant you that, if it weren’t for the “screw-them” type remarks she also made after yet another “very disappointing” election (i.e., Super Tuesday) about Democratic Party activists.
See, the thing is, in private, she disparages the Democratic Party – its base, its principles, its rules, its leadership – while publicly praising John McCain.
How else to interpret that, except that she is a member of the Establishment – a member of the plutocracy, in other words – and is chiefly concerned with preserving its, and her, privileges?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ: “Diversity of viewpoint is a real asset on a political blog and once lost is not easily regained.”
Thanks for that… I’d be happy to stop posting here (or at least moderate some of my spontaneous but heart-felt obnoxiousness) if the powers-that-be who control the blog invited someone who supports the Clinton campaign to regularly post above the fold… assuming, that is, they don’t get a namby-pamby Alan Colmes-like clone, but someone who genuinely (and culturally) reflects the attitudes and passions of those of us who oppose Obama.
When I first started reading ObsidianWings (this after publius closed his blog and relocated here, before the presidential primary season started, when the focus of anger was on Bush and the war in Iraq) there were a number of conservative Republican bloggers who posted here regularly. Although they didn’t provide a true balance of opinion, they least acted as a buffer against the more preposterous assertions flaunted about by the liberal-progressive regulars.
But now, not only have they disappeared, the increasingly loud ululations of the Obama Crew has drowned out the opinions of half the constituency of the Democratic Party. Here, it’s become the amen choir, talking to itself – a closed loop of attitudes and opinions continually reinforcing itself thru repetition: kind of like the techniques religious cults use to keep their members in line.
Jay Jerome, are you casting yourself as a voice of moderation and reason? If so, I can only thank you for giving me several minutes of amusement this Sunday.
Shorter Jay: The insults will continue until they convince you.
if i disliked a blog as much as Jay appears to dislike this one, i sure as sh!t wouldn’t keep coming back.
Here, it’s become the amen choir, talking to itself – a closed loop of attitudes and opinions continually reinforcing itself thru repetition
Jay,
I’ve also noticed a reduced frequency of top level posts and of comments by people who aren’t progressive Dems here of late. In that respect, I hope you and others with different viewpoints will continue to participate here.
On the other hand, I (and I suspect others) would find your comments both more interesting and potentially more persuasive if they weren’t so filled with invective and if you presented some arguments that aren’t based on such a tribalistic view of politics.
It isn’t that I think tribalism is unimportant in politics (I think it is), rather I see it as being counterproductive and forums like this blog are places where we should be discussing how to escape from the traps that tribalism sets for us, including both a realistic discussion of where we stand presently, and speculation about other approaches we could be taking.
In this and other recent threads I’ve been trying to push back against the emerging group consensus on this blog by making a contrarian case that the political affiliations and choices being made by others not as heavily represented here (for example some of HRC’s supporters) are not as irrational as they appear, but may be grounded in a different set of assumptions about our system than the set held in common by the majority of the progressive Dems evident on this blog.
I’ve tried to do this without insulting those who see things differently, because in my view a resort to name calling is an admission that you’ve lost (or will lose) the argument on substantive grounds. You could do the same – it is more work and less entertaining, but it can be done, if you really want to. I say this fully cognizant of the fact that I myself do not always live up to this standard.
At what point should we judge that you simply do not want to engage in anything other than pointless name calling, because IMHO evidence to the contrary has been rather thin of late. For example, in the 3:08 pm comment of yours which I just quoted from, I count 4 put downs (“namby-pamby”, “preposterous”, “loud ululations”, “religious cults”) and 1 substantive point (the echo-chamber effect is in evidence here). That’s not a very good ratio, IMHO.
So more dissent, and less name calling would be appreciated, at least from my point of view.
a note to the people slagging on Jay:
From my experience the viewpoint that Jay is posting from has a non-trivial number of adherents in the real world. Don’t discount it just because he is expressing it in a less than polite and constructive way. I wish he would find a better way to get his message across on this blog, because I think it is one that progressive Dems ignore to their peril.
Can we please leave my uvula out of this?
I’ve never once ululated, though I’m not above the occasional, but inoppurtune yodel. But it is usually a diversionary eruption.
And speaking of eruptions, what Hilzoy doesn’t yet know is that the “religious cult” (cripes, can we overcook the rhetoric just a little more) she’s assembled here will end up throwing her into the mouth of a volcano because at some point it becomes ethical to sacrifice someone important, and that ain’t me, a fact which I find highly ethical.
Actually, I think what happened at Obsidian Wings was somewhat like the movie “King Kong”. Hilzoy, like the Ann Darrow character, showed up and was so convincing, eloquent, and understanding of others’ viewpoints that the conservative beast had his and her savage breast soothed, he kidded.
The roaring, fairly conservative Kong didn’t stand a chance, the big softie.
Jay, I don’t mind your flouting as long as I can continue with the preposterous flaunting.
So more dissent, and less name calling would be appreciated, at least from my point of view.
not gonna happen. he’s been coming back to this site he says he hates for many many months now, and has been asked repeatedly to beat his insults into insights. and he never does.
save your effort.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Diversity is a great thing. But, you know, I think we can have diversity of opinion without insulting each other.
And Jay Jerome constantly insults people with the same tactic of picking out a group they belong to and using all kinds of obnoxious language about that group.
It seems that you are telling me not to chase him off, because his contribution is valuable. And surely of course I do think he makes plenty of great contributions. And I’ve engaged with him several times. But I don’t understand why the onus should be on everyone to be patient with harassing language, rather than the onus being on Jay Jerome to show a little more maturity.
I’m simply not accepting that he’s some kind of broken animal who is incapable of change and that we have to take the good with the bad.
Again, I have no problem with the viewpoint.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ, in some ways I think you’re a lot more condescending towards him than I am. I don’t think of him as a specimen that we need to keep around to observe. I think we should just expect him to stop trying to find every way of insulting people falling short of the posting rules and then taunting people for crossing the posting rules when they do in response.
A non-trivial numbers of adherents doesn’t make a viewpoint non-trivial. I would posit that the “echo chamber” effect you are concerned with is a result of posters like Jay engaging in shallow discussions; when there are more viewpoints represented (and represented more coherently) on the front page and in the comments, the discussions themselves have more depth and are more genuine. Jay behavior is a net contributor to overall shallowness, not an antidote to it.
cleek and ara and Adam,
OK, great – so if we run Jay off, then who represents his point of view? I guess we have to take turns, huh? Next week it’s your turn, ’cause I already did my share of carrying water for things I don’t really agree with, just to mute the echoes a little bit.
In other words, if the price of diversity is putting up with some insults, I’ll put up with some insults, so long as they aren’t flagrantly over the line. One person’s trolling is another person’s strongly held opinion, strongly expressed. Wasn’t russell just recently chiding us to stop having such thin skins.
And as for not pining over lost causes and hopeless tasks, jeeze what kind of progressive do you call yourself? I thought that was at least half of the job description?
Alternatively, I would say that there are many regulars here who are routinely condescending, but since they generally argue in good faith and abide by the posting rules, I think that their spirited defenses actually end up as a positive. It’s not fair to equate them with a poster who’s condescending about things he took 10 seconds to Google that are objectively incorrect, which Jay did in this thread and which he’s done elsewhere.
It seems plain to me that the former sort of posters raise the the level of discourse in the discussions, while the latter sort clearly don’t, regardless of whether they represent an alternate viewpoint.
To be clear, I don’t advocate chasing anybody out and I’m fine if Jay stays, though I think he behavior is occasionally borderline w/r/t the posting rules. What I am saying is that the reason for that isn’t because alternate viewpoints are a prima facie good. Being unnecessarily vituperative lowers the level of discourse no matter how unique a perspective someone might bring to the table.
when there are more viewpoints represented (and represented more coherently) on the front page and in the comments, the discussions themselves have more depth and are more genuine.
Adam,
I think you are conflating breadth (the range of topics and viewpoints discussed) with depth (the quality of the discussion on a particular topic). I see them as independent variables, and perhaps I’m willing to put up with more than you are for the sake of extending the breadth of the conversation, as a necessary prelude to getting more depth in those areas of extension.
Almost all of the political blogs that I read have shown a noticeable polarization and narrowing of opinion over the last several months, a trend that I’d like to see reversed rather than accelerated.
Being unnecessarily vituperative lowers the level of discourse no matter how unique a perspective someone might bring to the table.
Then we have a cost – benefit analysis here. Lowering the level of discourse is a cost, broadening the perspective is a benefit. It depends on how you weight the cost vs. the benefit. Personally, it worries me that this blog is now on an orbital path taking it a bit too close to the event horizon of echo-chamber territory (from which there is no escape) for my comfort, so I see the benefit of backing off from that hazard as pretty high. YMMV.
Personally, it worries me that this blog is now on an orbital path taking it a bit too close to the event horizon of echo-chamber territory
So long as Sebastian and I still both comment here, I don’t think that’s going to happen… unless of course the theory that we’re both the same person is actually correct. (You might think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.)
I don’t think of him as a specimen that we need to keep around to observe.
ara,
That’s not what I meant, so maybe you can help me out here. How do I express the idea (in a non-condescending way) that I think somebody has a viewpoint worth listening too, without necessarily sharing that viewpoint or endorsing the manner in which they are expressing it currently (because the latter comes across to me in an off-putting way)?
I’m not a wordsmith, so if you can come up with a better way of putting this idea (“I don’t agree with you, but I still want to hear what you have to say, and by the way, please stop flinging mud at me because I don’t like it when you do that” ), then please do tell.
It seems to me that any criticism of somebody’s style of communication could be twisted around and represented as condescension using your formulation, which leaves no middle ground between agreeing with someone or discounting their point of view altogether.
We should also not forget Brett as a libertarian/conservative voice of weight that rarely uses personal insults (although the question of arming the unborn is still not resolved 😉 ).
I hope we are still in agreement that JJ until now has not really waded into br|l territory.
The price of diversity is not putting up with insults.
I wouldn’t worry about Jay Jerome. When he claims to want to leave, his reason typically is that he’s bored of us, that we’re somehow less than adequate, and that we don’t deserve his time, not that we’ve hurt his feelings. I think he’s a tough fella. He can handle my feeble effete rarefied dandy liberal criticism. I vaguely recall him once inviting someone to a fight in LA.
From my experience the viewpoint that Jay is posting from has a non-trivial number of adherents in the real world.
FWIW:
I really do not have a dog in the Clinton vs Obama fight. Jay doesn’t bug me all that much.
He also doesn’t seem to have that much to say. “Obama’s got nothing and his supporters are effete snobs” seems to be the nub of it. It’s like listening to someone here in Boston talk about the Yankees. After a while (and not a very long while) you just tune it out.
I’m sure there are folks out there who can make a good, substantive case for Hillary, but IMO Jay ain’t one of them. Maybe he knows someone he could recommend.
Thanks –
John Thullen: Hilzoy, like the Ann Darrow character, showed up and was so convincing, eloquent, and understanding of others’ viewpoints that the conservative beast had his and her savage breast soothed, he kidded.
Actually, that is pretty much true in my case. I respect all front-pagers and most commenters here, but I can’t think of anyone who has had more impact on me than Hilzoy. CC and Katherine had a lot of impact, but I only noticed because Hilzoy softened me up.
Jes: So long as Sebastian and I still both comment here, I don’t think that’s going to happen… unless of course the theory that we’re both the same person is actually correct. (You might think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.)
Do you have ANY idea how hot coffee going through your sinuses feels? I love you Jes (even if it doesn’t seem that way most days).
FWIW: I think that Hilzoy should mention that the tape is edited by the Obama supporter who wrote the HuffPo piece and that this is not one quote.
Jesurgislac: I couldn’t possibly comment.
Jes, are you referring to House of Cards?
oooh!
We should also not forget Brett as a libertarian/conservative voice of weight that rarely uses personal insults
Yeah, although wherever he is I’m sure he’s feeling oddly vindicated now that his Clinton Deragement ™ is now widely accepted in progressive circles.
OCSteve: Do you have ANY idea how hot coffee going through your sinuses feels?
I sniffed raw organic garlic juice once, attempting to clear a sinus infection. Burned like ruddy hell.
ral: Jes, are you referring to House of Cards?
Ian Richardson was fantastic as Francis Urquhart. Odd how before George W. Bush we would assume that evil politicians had to be really, really clever in order to get away with the things they’d do.
ThatLeftTurn,
Um, what insightful viewpoint does JJ bring to the table here? He wants Clinton to get the nomination. Fine, but other people here who are capable of civilized discourse also want that. He seems to have some bizarre theory about how the party is fracturing between working-class-real-Americans-who-love-Clinton-and-cut-steel-for-a-living-in-rural-areas and effete-latte-drinking-urban-yuppie-snobs-who-love-Obama-and-rape-babies. OK…I might be interested in hearing more about this theory if JJ was able to muster any evidence for it, but I’ve found often enough that he’s not that it is not worth my time to engage.
The issue here isn’t just that JJ is a rude jerk — it is also that he doesn’t contribute anything beyond his completely unsubstantiated opinion. He makes no effort to convince anyone, and frankly, I don’t think he has convinced anyone of anything. Seriously, has anyone here been convinced my JJ’s “arguments”? Anyone at all? Does anyone think that this keen sociological “analysis” yields any insight that reading a David Broder column wouldn’t impart better?
“A country where there are only two options, where D and R (or X and Y, or C and L) simply exchange being in power for being in opposition, with reasonable surety that after a few years in opposition they will be in power again, is a country where political corruption is likely not to be policed as strongly as it will be in countries where this equable arrangement does not hold true: where politicians are strongly motivated to police each other’s behavior.”
I don’t think there is much empirical evidence for that concept. Do you believe that Italy has less corrupt government than the UK for instance? 3rd parties may have all sorts of advantages (though I’m somewhat skeptical) but policing corruption better isn’t really one of them.
I tend to think that the two party state is something of an illusion anyway. The Democrats of today aren’t the Democrats of 1970 (thank God!). They share a name, and that is about it.
He also doesn’t seem to have that much to say.
After a while (and not a very long while) you just tune it out.
As always I’m happy to stand with russell, If I come to a long comment by jj when cruising through a thread I skip over it, figuring that any substance he offers (not to mention blathercrap) will come up later.
If readers feel morally bound to read his comments, it might help to think of him as the court fool, if not altogether skilled in his antics. A mediocre fool, as it were; too unskilled to get his dance steps down.
When he relaxes and lets his laugh lines show, softening his aspect, he’s reasonably congenial company. This is something quite distinct from his customary rictus.
In any event, he’s certain to be loving being the center of attention.
Vis-á-vis LeftTurn’s asking after suggestions for usefully civilized discourse: Respond to jj’s points of substance; if there are none, ignore him.
On the other hand if he offers commenters an enjoyable opportunity to exercise their otherwise underused snarkery skills, then he can be seen as a resource for self-improvement.
I’d like to get back to the original top-level topic, Hillary vs. the progressive activist Dems.
Here’s a rational case, as I see it, for the approach which ABC used in the Philly debate ( “I” and “me” are used below in the hypothetical sense):
A. Policy discussions are not very meaningfull, especially at the level of minor details that distinguish HRC and Obama on many of the issues. This is because every candidate will tell us what we want to hear, not necessarily what they really plan on doing (or will be capable of doing given the constraints on them) once in office.
Also, some issues that will become crucial during their term in office are not yet visible, because we cannot know what the future holds in store for us, except that there will be surprises. magistra made this last point earlier, more eloquently than I can:
The difference between voting on a candidates’s ‘character’ and their stated policies is also related to how uncertain the future is going to be. If you think that the future will be fairly certain, and the big problems of today will be the big problems of tomorrow, then it makes sense to vote for the person with the best current policies. If you think that things may change very abruptly, you are more likely to want the candidate who you think will be able to cope when the Martians invade/the Rapture happens/the tsunami hits. Then voting for a president with ‘character’ makes more sense: someone who can adapt quickly and appropriately to immense change. (How you decide on who has this ‘character’ is an entirely different matter).
B. If policy preferences are discounted (per above) then I would have to focus on character as a basis for picking a candidate. Given this premise, the most important aspect of character might be: does the candidate belong to my tribe, and hence will work for my benefit, rather than against it. A person who is not a member of my tribe poses a significant risk to my interests once in power, even if they say soothing things right now.
C. The best way for me to answer this question (are they in my tribe?) is to focus on cultural identity markers, because they are harder to fake than other things.
Put A + B + C together, and I would want to see the candidates get grilled over their cultural associations rather than their policy positions.
I personally don’t agree with these premises and conclusions, but I know and have conversations with people who do, and I can appreciate that their positions are internally coherent and make sense if you buy into the assumptions underlying them.
The relevance of this to the controversy over Hillary’s remarks re: MoveOn.org and Democratic activists, is that these statements are consistent with membership in the tribe she is bidding to be considered a member of, given the way that these groups are perceived (fairly or not) as being part of an opposite tribe within the Democratic party.
Jay Jerome keeps writing comments here that I interpret (in part because they are similar to things that I’ve heard from other people in the face-to-face world) as supporting the idea that there are two tribes here, with one candidate for each tribe, and that the tribal aspect of this Democratic primary campaign is significant.
For example:
There are two Democratic communities: and your side doesn’t like the other side, and the other side feels the same about you. You share one kind of collective identity, they share another.
If I’m not making a fair interpretation of what he is saying, then I apologize in advance for misconstruing his words, both to him (sorry, Jay!) and to the rest of you, for advancing a bad argument.
If I am making a fair interpretation, then I submit that this is a poltically important insight on his part, and one that bears repeating, because if the Democratic nominee is going to win in November then this problem needs to be addressed with considerable care and effort. Rejecting what JJ has to say because he says it in an abrasive manner is not a good idea, IMHO.
This is one reason why I don’t look very kindly on calls for Jay to be banned, or to just go away already, or to be ignored, despite the fact that I personally don’t appreciate the sort of language he uses.
I think that there is ample evidence that JJ is not honest. Gary has already charted how his stated political affiliations alternate depending on the kind of point he wants to make, such that he vibrates between a gruff, straight to the point independent, and a long time Dem loyalist. His recounting of his kaffeklatsch about politics is more akin to Paul Bunyan making the Grand Canyon than to any sort of attempt to present information that is designed to persuade and convince.
There’s nothing wrong with being a fabulist, I grew up in Mississippi surrounded by them. But when people are having a serious discussion and many of the contextual clues are stripped out, with an absence rather than an overabundance of shared culture, they really aren’t welcome.
OK…I might be interested in hearing more about this theory if JJ was able to muster any evidence for it, but I’ve found often enough that he’s not that it is not worth my time to engage.
Turbulence,
How else do you explain the unusually high numbers of Democratic voters who are telling pollsters that they will vote for McCain if their candidate is not the nominee (IIRC 28% of Clinton supporters, Obama’s supporters somewhat less than that), in a contest which is rather less ideological in character than most?
Also, what JJ has to say about this tribal split is congruent with my own personal experience. YMMV.
Sebastian: I don’t think there is much empirical evidence for that concept. Do you believe that Italy has less corrupt government than the UK for instance? 3rd parties may have all sorts of advantages (though I’m somewhat skeptical) but policing corruption better isn’t really one of them.
Italy is a weird political situation – politicians tend to stay in power, even if the parties change and fall. (It is weird in other ways too, by its relative youth as a democracy – it’s only had elections for 60 years or so – by the naked political power of the Catholic Church, and the modestly-clad political power of the Mafia, which have a lot more to do with each other than either will admit in public.) “Having a strong third party” isn’t a magic wand that will force politicians to police each other’s corruption: that’s one route to it. The key is that politicians/parties should be aware there’s a real hazard that if they go too far they’ll be kicked out of power. That hazard does not appear to exist in Italy to any great degree, any more than it exists in the US.
What Italy has that the US does not have is a wide and intense degree of political involvement. The turnout in elections is high – when an election happens in Italy, I think they routinely get an 80%+ turnout, and that without any penalty for not voting. Up until 15 years ago (I think – it was sometime in the mid-90s) Italy was 100% proportional representation, and in that system, every vote counts, and everyone knows every vote counts. It changes to a system that’s partly first-past-the-post and partly-PR, and I don’t know exactly how it works – but there’s still a high degree of political involvement, voter-turnout, and informed electorates.
When JJ started reading us, according to him, there was one conservative commenter: Andy. (Charles had resigned, but popped back occasionally, as in every three or four months. For all I know, he might do so again. Seb posts as often now as he did then, which is not nearly as often as he would if he consulted only my wishes. 😉 )
I find the idea that we had anything at all to do with the fact that our conservative commenter “disappeared” (a nice word for it) — well, it leaves me completely speechless.
And Dutch: just got home after what I think was 33 hours of travel, door to door. Do you have a link on the editing? (I’ll probably find it eventually; just looking for a shortcut.)
OK, great – so if we run Jay off, then who represents his point of view?
who cares. there is no “point of view” qouta.
he’s a fncking obnoxious, argumentative, insulting troll. whatever point he’s trying to make is far overpowered by his antagonism, and has been ever since he showed up. his “point of view” is irrelevant, since he’s not here to discuss anything, only to insult.
hilzoy,
Regarless of the reasons, do you feel that these pages are broader or narrower in ideological outlook, than they were say 6 months, or a year ago. My impression is that of late there has been a noticeable narrowing, especially on the topic of the presidential primaries. I understand that over time a group may move towards a consensus, but isn’t there a slippery slope between that and echo-chamber?
Oh, and Sebastian: what hilzoy said. Please post more often.
Dear Hilzoy, I hope you are feeling better.
As a NATIONAL REVIEW conservative and Republican, there are many reasons why I disagree with, and dislike, both Obama and Hillary Clinton. However, I’ll simply say this was an interesting column you wrote.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
If you think that the future will be fairly certain, and the big problems of today will be the big problems of tomorrow, then it makes sense to vote for the person with the best current policies. If you think that things may change very abruptly, you are more likely to want the candidate who you think will be able to cope when the Martians invade/the Rapture happens/the tsunami hits.
I don’t think this is correct. We know that the future is uncertain. Basing your electoral decision on which candidate has the best policies may still be optimally good because it tells us how effective the candidate is at choosing policies right now. I mean, if Clinton claimed that when elected, she would launch a nuclear strike against Paris, it wouldn’t make sense to vote for her even if she demonstrated that she was far more honest and compassionate than any other candidate.
Given this premise, the most important aspect of character might be: does the candidate belong to my tribe, and hence will work for my benefit, rather than against it. A person who is not a member of my tribe poses a significant risk to my interests once in power, even if they say soothing things right now.
Huh? Most people think that many of their fellow tribesmen are jerks who couldn’t be trusted with anything, let alone the Presidency.
C. The best way for me to answer this question (are they in my tribe?) is to focus on cultural identity markers, because they are harder to fake than other things.
These are not hard to fake at all: see Fred Thompson’s red pickup truck. See Bush’s fake swagger and pretend “ranch”: have we learned nothing in the last 8 years? I’ll tell you something right now: neither Obama nor Clinton are ever, ever going to be as skilled at GW when it comes to faking cultural markers. If we can’t get enough voters past stupid tribalism politics, we are doomed. This goes back to my earlier question about why character is harder to lie about than policy…
Besides, if you care about tribal identity, there’s no need for a debate: the scary black man is NOT part of your tribe. Period. He’s part of the inner city tribe.
In any event, the debate didn’t focus on what tribe the candidates belonged to: if it did, we would have seen questions asking them how often they went to church or fired a weapon or spent time growing up in rural parts of the country or what their favorite foods were.
Finally, do you really think that Charlie Gibson, who makes $5 million per year, is attuned to the needs of rural voters for tribal identity questions?
I can appreciate that their positions are internally coherent and make sense if you buy into the assumptions underlying them.
I’m sorry, you’ve made a valiant effort, but this explanation still makes no sense to me. Which is fine, people believe in all sorts of nonsensical things and I might just be slow on the uptake, but really, this explanation seems a great deal less likely than “stupid media people think ratings will be driven by hammering candidates but lack even the rudimentary ability to understand policy needed to do that, so instead we end up with pointless gotcha/gaffe questions”.
If I am making a fair interpretation, then I submit that this is a poltically important insight on his part, and one that bears repeating, because if the Democratic nominee is going to win in November then this problem needs to be addressed with considerable care and effort. Rejecting what JJ has to say because he says it in an abrasive manner is not a good idea, IMHO.
I’d like to see some evidence that a significant number of people in the country actually exhibit this problem. JJ has failed to provide any. You seem to have some anecdotes. I would prefer data. I’m a little tired of appeasing the egos of people who think I’m not a real American, but I’m willing to do it if you have evidence that this isn’t just a few people who will vote D in the end (or a few people who were never going to seriously push for Clinton in the general).
Jes,
I’m with Seb on this one. The relationship between multiple parties and government corruption seems to me like one easily amenable to modern political science research. Your argument doesn’t really make sense to me, but I’d gladly reconsider if you could cite a paper or some other evidence.
FWIW, I think the unique structural factors had a bigger role until a few years ago: when party discipline is low and congress had bizarre coalitions, one is less likely to see parties holding their opponents feet to the fire.
cleek,
All I can say is that if I entered a new thread, only to discover that I’d already been invoked by name in a dismissive and taunting fashion (c.f. Anarch’s comment at April 19th 11:33 am) before I’d even made a comment, that I too would be sorely tempted to reply in a “obnoxious, argumentative, insulting” manner. What goes around comes around.
I don’t have a horse in this fight, but I don’t think that the uprising against Joe Lieberman was beneficial to Democrats, and this replay with Hillary Clinton is similarly unhelpful. Comments like
reveal a bit too much. When people think that other people who disagree with them are brainwashed, evil, stupid, or “need professional help”, that tends make the people who presumptively need the help a bit less receptive to the message.
Dutchmarbel: It occurs to me that you might have meant the original tape. I thought that was pretty obvious; certainly not concealed. (I mean, they put a great big break between the two bits.)
I originally thought you might have meant that the part I quoted was spliced together. If it was, I would of course be interested to know about that.
I’d like to see some evidence that a significant number of people in the country actually exhibit this problem. JJ has failed to provide any. You seem to have some anecdotes. I would prefer data. I’m a little tired of appeasing the egos of people who think I’m not a real American, but I’m willing to do it if you have evidence that this isn’t just a few people who will vote D in the end (or a few people who were never going to seriously push for Clinton in the general).
Turbulence,
You are right that argument by anecdote doesn’t mean much unless it is backed up by more objective sources.
My reply to: “show me data” is, go read Kevin Phillips’ body of work (which contain extensive citations of polling data and electoral results broken down along demographic and cultural lines) “The Cousin’s War” and “American Theocracy” are two of my particular favorites, in part because his sociological data and the conclusions he draws from them match my anecdotal experience, that there are two distinct political tribes in the US split along cultural fault lines, and these fault lines partially distinguish the GOP from the Democratic party, but also run through the middle of the latter party.
The other data-based argument I’d make is to take a look at the current regional and demographic differences between Hillary and Obama and how they poll vs. McCain and decide if you think there is enough evidence to support the idea of a split. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com is my personal favorite for this kind of analysis.
I think there is a lot of room for disagreement here, which is something that makes a debate worthwhile. Please cite sources arguing against the idea of a cultural split in the party (for example, is there evidence that this is something very recent and peculiar to this particular campaign, perhaps because of higher rates of loyalty to the two candidates?); I’d like to hear them.
All I can say is that if I entered a new thread, only to discover that I’d already been invoked by name in a dismissive and taunting fashion…
he has earned his reputation.
ever since the race turned into Hillary v Obama, he’s been nothing but insulting to everyone here, including the posters, who are the fairest bunch of political bloggers on the net, IMO.
in any case, i’m done with this. i don’t think i should presume to play ObWi comment monitor.
All I can say is that if I entered a new thread, only to discover that I’d already been invoked by name in a dismissive and taunting fashion (c.f. Anarch’s comment at April 19th 11:33 am) before I’d even made a comment, that I too would be sorely tempted to reply in a “obnoxious, argumentative, insulting” manner. What goes around comes around.
Were you the kind of commenter to warrant that kind of pre-emptive response, I doubt I’d care about your posting, period. However, unlike Jay, you don’t have a nearly two-month track record of lambasting the entire commentariat here — almost invariably unprovoked, almost invariably disproportionate to the critique, and almost invariably dishonestly — so that doesn’t apply to you, nor do I expect it ever to. Ironically, my post was exactly a case of what went around coming back around; since I know, from past experience, that Jay is actively uninterested in honest discussion, why the hell should I bother to treat him as anything other than the jabbering fool he tries so hard to be?
This isn’t a permanent condition, mind. If he starts participating in honest debate here, I’ll respond to him (or not) as I would to any other commenter. I’m just not going to hold my breath, nor will it break my heart when he fails me one more time.
When people think that other people who disagree with them are brainwashed, evil, stupid, or “need professional help”, that tends make the people who presumptively need the help a bit less receptive to the message.
“Brainwashed” may be overstating the matter, but since that’s the essential content of the recent NYT article detailing the Pentagon’s disinformation campaign against the American people, well, it’s at least in the right ballpark.
How else do you explain the unusually high numbers of Democratic voters who are telling pollsters that they will vote for McCain if their candidate is not the nominee (IIRC 28% of Clinton supporters, Obama’s supporters somewhat less than that), in a contest which is rather less ideological in character than most?
I’m sorry but you are not permitted to say that these numbers are “unusually high” without citing corresponding polls from other primaries and making a decent argument that the moment in those primaries when the polls were taken were similar to the moment this poll was taken. We’re talking about one poll in a highly dynamic contest. People’s feelings are at their peak, they think their candidate is being cheated, and their emotional energies are being directed at their opponent. No one has defined McCain or even spent time saying what laughable positions he advocates. Neither Democratic candidate has endorsed the other. There have been no rousing convention speeches focused on unity.
McCain has been remarkably successful in making people believe things about him that are just not true, but he’s also never had to defend challenges from the left. Given the number of low information voters in this country, McCain’s early support is hardly surprising.
But all of these things will change: one candidate will endorse and campaign for the other, people’s anger over the primaries will fade as the general election campaign starts, tons of money will be spent showing that McCain is a sociopath, etc. Really, I think trying to extrapolate the behavior of voters based on this one poll is more than a little bit silly.
I have asked you to make a case: you’ve asked me a question, and one that I find slightly ridiculous at that. That’s not making a case.
Incidentally, speaking of reaction to varying viewpoints, Sean M Brooks has just started posting here with what I think we can all agree is a viewpoint radically different to the majority of commenters. Has he been run off? Has he been personally insulted? No — at least, I hope he doesn’t feel personally insulted by anything that’s been posted here — in large part because he’s approaching the discussion respectfully — not obsequiously, just respectfully — which is all that’s needed. The same is true of ThatLeftTurnInABQ and a few of our other newer commenters; there’s an unfortunate tendency for a pile-on here, but beyond that, the threads tend to be fairly congenial. It takes a fair amount of work to get the kind of response Jay is now (deservedly) getting. Though obviously, YMMV.
If we can’t get enough voters past stupid tribalism politics, we are doomed.
Posted by: Turbulence | April 20, 2008 at 08:05 PM
Well, Turb, while I quite agree with you, the unfortunate fact is that one person’s “stupid tribalism politics” is another’s “being in touch with fundamental American values” – and even more unfortunately, we (the voting public) don’t get to pick which approach we receive.
“hen people think that other people who disagree with them are brainwashed, evil, stupid, or “need professional help”, that tends make the people who presumptively need the help a bit less receptive to the message.”
I have a couple of comments.
First, on most issues it’s just silly to think one’s political opponents are evil or crazy. But there are exceptions. When it comes to torture, for example, people who advocate torture are evil or stupid or misinformed or brainwashed or something of that sort and if that hurts someone’s feelings, the pain is probably less severe than that inflicted by torturers.
Second, on “brainwashed” I just take for granted that most or all of us probably have beliefs that we hold for irrational reasons. We take for granted that other people (though perhaps not our own brilliant selves) can be manipulated by really stupid advertising. One of the most annoying ads I’ve seen lately is aimed at getting hip young urban sophisticates to subscribe to a certain allegedly liberal newspaper. Someone must think it’s going to work. Political ads are obviously aimed at nitwits some of the time. I know I’ve been “brainwashed” (i.e., accepted things as fact that were really just prejudices that had been ground into me) in the past and presumably there may be some beliefs I hold now that aren’t rational, though I’m not currently in a position to identify them. Come back in ten or twenty years and maybe I’ll know.
DaveC, the “uprising” against Lieberman was great for Democrats. Without it I doubt we’d have retaken Congress in 2006. Lamont’s successful primary challenge showed other candidates that coming out strongly against the war was a winning political move, and many of those who had races less complicated than Lamont’s won because of it.
The mistake was that the national Democrats didn’t follow through, because they foolishly believed that it didn’t matter which won. If they’d given Lamont real support, Lieberman might now be safely ensconced in a lucrative lobbying position, Democrats would be better off, and the Senate’s government oversight committee might have a chair who’d actually have it doing something.
TLTIABQ — Early polling in a presidential election has almost no predictive power. It is nearly 7 months till the election. So hurt feelings among the primary contestants’ backers are raw because the primary isn’t over, no significant campaigning has been done against the Republican nominee, and we have no idea what world events or unknown issues may intervene between now and the general election. Furthermore, the demographics of each Dem candidate’s supporters has little relevance unless you actually believe that those voting for HRC now will not vote for Obama, and vice-versa. The only election resulting in such bitterness in my personal memory was 1968, and bitter as some aspects of this primary have been recently, it doesn’t hold a candle to 1968. Further, McCain is a MUCH weaker candidate than Nixon, and McCain’s party is the despised incumbent, not the Democrats.
Time for someone to start hatingonjayjerome.blogspot.com? I call not it.
WELCOME HOME, hILZOY!
(Are you still feeling your fall?)
Hope you’re swell.
Evening meditation:
In other words, elect McCain, my friends, and you are summoning the awful genie of another 9/11. I said it. I mean it. I’m not taking it back. That man’s announced policies could well produce a blowback that will lead to the end of democracy in the United States. It is a momentous decision. Juan Cole
Is Hillary Clinton going to campaign for Barack Obama if he’s the nominee? If not, she’s finished. If so, the hard feelings will mostly wash away, although there will always be bitter-enders, racists, and pigs.
DaveC. can count to a hundred.
Everyone hide.
Turbulence,
On the 28% party split figure, I’m going from personal memory (which obviously is very fallible) here in comparing this with past elections so you’re right, strike down the point I was making unless comparative polling data is available (which I don’t have right now). That 28% seems high to me but I can’t prove it.
Just out of curiousity, which past election do you think most closely resembles this one, in terms of structural features (incumbency or lack thereof on both sides, the state of the economy, an ongoing war)?
I’m thinking of 1988 (a variety of Democrats in the primary, a GOP VP incumbent closely associated with the policies of the outgoing admin., with some taint of scandal to the latter), 1992 (a variety of Democrats in the primary, a GOP candidate burdened by a faltering economy), and 1972 (an ongoing war unpopular with some voters, still supported by others, a division reflected within the Democratic primary field). I don’t see any really close parallels though, we really are in uncharted waters this year.
bemused,
I was citing that figure as evidence of fissures within the Democratic party currently, not as an accurate predictor of the general election result in November. Time will tell how much of an irreparable split there is. I hope it will prove to be a minor one.
Dear Anarch. I hope you are well.
Many thanks for the kind things you’ve said about me, posted at 9.31 PM. I appreciate them, and hope I continue to live up to your compliments.
In the chat rooms, I go to, tho, I admit I can be rougher. But I do try never to be vulgar, obscene,etc., to anyone. By and large, I have no complaints about how I’ve been treated in this blog.
Chat rooms, because they are so SPONTANEOUS and IMMEDIATE, encourages people to be more EMPATHIC than they might otherwise have been. Posting a message in a blog, however, is more like writing a letter. It gives you the chance, if you wish, to be more DETAILED or NUANCED.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
Time for someone to start hatingonjayjerome.blogspot.com? I call not it.
Oh comeon, jack. Go for it. How are things going anyway? I don’t get around to Unfogged very much.
I have to admit that sometimes the no-meanness rule sometimes just makes me passive-aggressive. 🙂 But on the whole, I find that it often causes me to think twice before posting. In the end what I say is much more pleasant than it might be otherwise, and there’s also far fewer things that I wish I could, um, rephrase slightly. The norm of civility here doesn’t get nearly enough credit, I think. It’s an underrated and invaluable part of the positive intellectual environment.
LeftTurn, in 2000, 11% of self-identified Democrats voted for Bush, and the same was true in 2004. So even if none of those 28% of Clinton supporters (approximately 14% of Democrats) cool down by November (which I doubt), it’s not necessarily that dramatic a change.
I sure hope Obama (D, Rezko) gets the nod. There is no doubt he will be a popular President and will run the most honest administration ever.
I like his ideas about punishing the rich with higher taxes. If we can drive all those blood suckers out of the country we will all be better off. We need to make this country as unfriendly to the rich and their corporations as possible in order to prevent the further rise of corporate fascism.
If you want honest government I can think of no better example than Obama’s home state of Illinois. I’m hoping he can bring that kind of honest government to the rest of us.
Jesurgislac, isn’t the Green party in the US the third party that you suggested?
I live in a much more liberal part of Washington than Wonkie. In my neighborhood, Greens often outpoll Republicans. But there have been no Greens elected here or anywhere else in Washington. The individuals who run as Greens have weaker resumes and at least as much personal baggage than the ones who run as Democrats. It seems that we are already following your suggestion, but it is not having much effect.
Most liberals in the US with talent or money to contribute prefer influencing and supporting the Democrats over trying to replace them.
I think bitterness among the Democrats is exaggerated despite the fact that one of them called Hillary a whore. It will all be forgotten by September.
Tsam: Most liberals in the US with talent or money to contribute prefer influencing and supporting the Democrats over trying to replace them.
I am not surprised, given that the meme following the 2000 election was that Nader’s success was somehow responsible for George W. Bush’s Presidency, rather than the criminal actions of the Republicans in Florida and Texas. As I recall in 2004, rather than gearing up to prevent Republican election-rigging, Democratic rage was directed against Nader for running again, and presumably, against anyone who proposed to support him.
Jes, I was reviewing 2004-2005 blogs not long ago, and your memory plays you false in this instance. The need for vote security was a very large thing among liberal and left bloggers, with a lot of discussion of already-found problems like those in 2000 and new ones that clearly weren’t getting governmental attention. There was also a tremendous furor over the Kerry campaign’s persistently inept response to right-wing harassment. In the midst of this, yes, there was also vocal annoyance at Nader supporters, but a lot of it struck me as Nader-supporter-generated, because they had this habit of blithely dismissing every single scrap of evidence that the Democrats might be anything but identical to the Republicans, often downplaying obvious Republican wrong-doing and treating Democratic and independent efforts at fair election procedures as just window dressing. I ended up more annoyed about it it now than I was at the time, truthfully.
I have a feeling that Nader supporters would have done a lot better if they’d been willing to grant some basic distinctions. “Not better enough to be desirable” would have been…well, obviously true to me when it comes to the Democratic establishment, but in any event something that can be debated in light of actual votes and actions. “Identical to the Republican machine” obviously isn’t true, and to insist that someone like Digby or Sarah Hamsher is just the tool of corporate interests too – which Naderite commenters did on their weblogs, repeatedly – is just dumb.
The whole picture is of course complex, far more so than I can do justice to in any one comment. But no, I don’t think it’s true that there was or is any prevailing wisdom among American liberal bloggers that Nader is more responsible than Bush for what happened. I also think that you underestimate just how good the reasons are for regarding Nader as a genuinely bad man when it comes to the state of American elections.
Bruce: Jes, I was reviewing 2004-2005 blogs not long ago, and your memory plays you false in this instance.
Thanks for the correction re. content. I’m sure you’re right – I certainly didn’t go back and read 2004 blogs before posting my 3.08 comment.
But no, I don’t think it’s true that there was or is any prevailing wisdom among American liberal bloggers that Nader is more responsible than Bush for what happened.
Yet it’s certainly something that comes up, as if it were generally accepted: that Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election. This I’m not depending on my memory of what people were blogging about 4 years ago: it’s a recurrent line in blogs on left and right. And of course, it’s not true: Jeb Bush cost Al Gore the election.
Jay J’s protest that ObWi is becoming an echo chamber because only liberal elitist intellectuals are welcome is backwards IMO. This blog attracts people by its character at least as much as the people it attracts are setting its character.
Also the framing of Obama supporters like me as elitists is questionable. I am not drawn to Obama because of his belonging to the tribe of educated intellectuals, but by his apparent committment to a presidency subject to checks and balances.
[Sorry for the old topic, I didn’t have time to add this on Monday.]
The best analysis of the Obama controversy about his comments in San Francisco (“bitter-gate” is a horrid name) that I encountered is on Seattle radio host Dave Ross, a very moderate Democrat, on his Monday 4/14 show 9-10 am. The relevant part is between minutes 4:38 and 26:20. Obama was trying to explain _to_ privileged people how to doorbell in Pennsylvania without sounding insensitive to voters who are frustrated with the economy. The media and Hillary both have an interest in finding an offense in this that was not intended.
No one running in this election is a populist. Hillary is more practiced at faking populism than Obama is (for now). But Hillary seems to be hurting own her campaign, because it is sacrificing its positive goals to focus on being the anti-Obama.
By the way, I do find some people at work that are impressed with Obama’s openness and willingness to give complicated answers instead of the simplification that most spin depends on — people who mistrust Democrats and usually lean Republican. What the campaign professionals see as his lack of discipline has a side that does serve him well.
I do agree that there’s a screwy emphasis on Nader as spoiler, I should say, and some tendency to take Bush’s ill-gotten gains as givens. On the other hand, it is true that Nader said he’d rather have Bush win, when asked, and that he was quite willing to take Republican machine donations, and part of what irritates some folks who regard the Democrats as the least bad viable option is the tendency of Nader supporters to deny that their guy would or could ever do such a thing. So it all gets rather ugly and messy…and lets the Republican machine escape its due blame.
If we want to think coherently about corruption, this isn’t primarily an issue of political structures (whether it’s how many parties there are or how the political system is organised). It’s difficult to find many common structural features between (to take a few random examples), France, Ireland, Israel, Kenya and Russia, all of which have had serious problems with corruption at high political levels.
It’s much more a question of political culture: is corruption acceptable and normal? And looking at it from a historical point of view, corruption is the common, indeed default position: honest, uncorrupt government is historically quite rare. In most societies it has been taken for granted that people who achieve high political or public office will use this to enrich themselves and their friends. And when another set of politicians get in, they do the same.
To achieve uncorrupt government is possible, but difficult: it requires not just anti-corruption laws, but their persistent enforcement, and a cultural change that makes such behaviour politically/socially unacceptable. Britain was able to effect such a cultural change in the nineteenth century (British politics before then was as corrupt as anywhere) and other countries have also managed it. But just as a country can create a virtuous circle in which political corruption is punished, becomes less prevalent and hence less ‘normal’, a vicious circle back down into corruption is possible. In this, corruption goes unpunished, so more politicians are tempted to it and corrupt practices gradually become normalised (since ‘everyone’ is doing them).
It seems to me as an outsider that the US is now getting into this kind of vicious circle downwards into political corruption (I think the UK has so far mostly avoided it, but I’m not complacent about that fact).
On the other hand, it is true that Nader said he’d rather have Bush win, when asked
True, but the way I recall 1999/2000 (in fact, as I wrote to a friend in California early 2001 – I found the letter again not long ago, while clearing stuff out, and decided to hang on to it in a kind of “dear God, what was I *thinking*?) Bush came across to people who didn’t know him all that well as a complete flake who would do nothing much in his term in office but bring the Republican Party into disrepute for electing him.
There’s an extremely right-wing Conservative standing for Mayor of London right now, Boris Johnson, who has a similar reputation as a bit of a flake. (Slightly less so: Johnson ran no businesses into the ground, made a reasonable career as a right-wing bloviator for conservative media before becoming an MP, and has, AFAIK, no drunk-driving convictions.)
I think he’d be a disaster as Mayor of London – Ken Livingston has demonstrated, on July 7 2005 and on other less tragic occasions, that the role is not merely one of showing up and saying the right things, but is a post that requires intelligence, leadership, a capacity for seeing the city as a whole. Livingston’s leadership is why the casualties on July 7 were so low – as London’s emergency services acknowledged at the time, planning and rehearsing for a terrorist attack on London’s transport system was Livingston’s idea.
Nobody’s perfect: Livingston has been in office 8 years and it’s probably time for a change. And I caught myself thinking, well, if they elect Boris Johnson, at least he’ll be such a flake he’ll be nothing but a public embarrassment to the Conservatives, at a period when Labour’s a low and the Conservatives are trying to look like a party capable of governing.
Then I thought: that’s exactly what I and others thought about George W. Bush.
So yes: without actual experience of how disastrous George W. Bush’s presidential reign was going to be, I can quite see why someone with the goal of changing US politics long-term might say he hoped Bush would get elected.
TTLAABQ: Sorry, didn’t get to your question before sleep overcame me. — I think there has been a narrowing of views on the primary, among the commenters, but I tend to put it down to the actual campaign. (At least, if memory serves, I’ve read a number of “well, I thought HRC was OK before, but this is too much” comments — e.g., about her “McCain is ready to be CinC, but all Obama has is a speech” comment.)
I think the posters have narrowed only because of Andy’s death: Publius and I had both chosen candidates a while back. Though it’s certainly true of me that I was a lot happier with the idea of a Clinton victory six months ago than I am now.
I put a lot of it down to what might be too much focus on the primaries, and also the fact that it’s down to the two of us, plus the ever-present hope of Sebastian. 😉
I am not an American citizen, so I can speak only hypothetically on this.
If I could vote in the US elections, I’d hope for Obama as the Dem nominee. Although I am a cynic, he seems to be as “authentic” as we are likely to see in any candidate**. I doubt that he will be able* to really clear up the mess that the GOP (with Dem help) has created but at least I don’t see him as driving the cart even deeper into the digestive final product (I can’t say the same about the other choices).
If Hillary Clinton were the nominee, I’d decide based on the state, I’d live in. If a Dem win was secure there, I’d think about abstaining to make a point about not agreeing with HC’s methods. In a swing state I’d vote for her. I a deep red state I don’t know but definitely not for the Son of Cain.
For a potential third (not right-finge) party voter, I’d say: do it, if it does not matter and get yoursef heard. Do not do it, if this increases the chance of another GOPsta administration.
I had respect for Hillary Clinton in the past but she has done what she could to lose it and that should not be rewarded (but punishing her does not justify to throw the election in favor of the GOPistas).
*i.e. able against the united powers of GOPsterism, establishment (both parties) and “liberal” MSM
**I even believe that he is the only one remotely likely to try to bring the worst criminals of the current administration to justice. He is likely to fail but not for faults of his own.
I find it amusing that my recent decision to back Obama confers elite status.
Did the same miracle happen to Reagan supporters back in the day?
How about Bush supporters — elder and junior — what are they? A bunch of hayseed schmucks?
Odd. I never felt particularly downmarket when I supported Hillary. In fact, I do believe someone or other called me an elitist then, too.
Let me get this straight. My support for Obama means I’m an elitist, ergo (now I’m speaking Latin; hey, I like this elite stuff!) I’m like Leonard Bernstein serving cocktails to the Black Panthers.
Does any money come with this? Because if there’s no bump in my lifestyle, I might as well stop hanging with the black guy and become a Republican.
Let me get this straight. My support for Obama means I’m an elitist, ergo (now I’m speaking Latin; hey, I like this elite stuff!) I’m like Leonard Bernstein serving cocktails to the Black Panthers.
Heu, modo itera omnia quae mihi nunc nuper narravisti, sed nunc Anglice?
Jes, one of the things that I find strange in retrospect is the quantity and quality of voices warning about Bush in 1999-2000. Those of us who were at the time quite a mid more middling, right, or libertarian than we are now dismissed the bunch of them as “shrill”, then being more under corporate media or other spells than some of us are now. The equivalency story is one that’s all over a fairly broad spectrum of opinion at the time, not so much arguing as taking for granted that Bush and Gore would both run vision-constrained technocratic administrations and therefore it was just a matter of taste.
But these are all institutions that Nader was critiquing heavily at the time, and the truth was largely appearing in places like Mother Jones and The Nation that took him and his concerns seriously. So it would seem very odd to me to find that Nader too had come under the influence of the “centrist” propaganda mill. The world is of course full of strange and wonderful things, including moments of dazzling stupidity, but I find it much easier to believe that Nader’s serious about a “heighten the contradictions” stance that regards increased misery as a long-term good in provoking change than that he ignored all of his most articulate supporters in favor of soothing lies.
I do admit that I don’t know, however.
I’ve tried to post a comment about this twice, Bruce, and failed – not sure why. In short, then: I think you’re more likely to be right about this (and probably better-informed) than I am.
Jes: I try, at least. 🙂 But I’m also sure that I don’t know things that would matter. All I can do is say “this is how it looks to me now”, and try to keep informed. There are subjects I feel qualified to be a lil’ magisterial about, but this isn’t one of them.
Predictably, Drum doesn’t find this a big deal because he remembers MoveOn as being insufficiently or borderline supportive of the Afghanistan action, and because the activist base has always been against Hillary.
Drum’s schtick is to think that nothing that happens in campaigns is a big deal. He’s pretty naive for a pundit. That’s probably why i like him!
the activist base has always been against Hillary
people keep saying this. but is there any data to back it up ?
Definitional problem here. “Activist base” vs. netroots. The netroots is heavily committed to the 50 state strategy, ending the war, and grassroots empowerment. The netroots has therefore been against HRC due to her support for the war, DLC connections, and tendencies toward top-downism.
The “activist base” also includes union activists and local dem party activists who, in my experience are less interested in grass-roots activism (it dilutes their own influence, developed over the years by attention to the intricacies of party politics and rules.) They are also more favorable to HRC than the netroots.
I saw this dichotomy between grassroots and activist in attending local Dem party meetings after involvement with DFA. It comports with my experience in other community organizations, which like grassroots support for fund drives but not so much for decision-making.
data? Another of these elitist words!
We need no fornicating data! 😉 (date would be nice)
cleek,
Yes and no. The phrase “activist base” is wonderfully flexible: it could mean anything. If you take it to mean “people who thought invading Iraq was really stupid”, then the allegation is kind of true: compared to Obama or Edwards, Clinton has always been worse for those people. The trick here is exploiting the association between “activist” and “anti-war hippie”. Of course, most people who opposed the Iraq war were not pacifists and were never hippies. I don’t think being a MoveOn member is a good proxy for “people who think the Iraq war was bad”.
Bruce: Thank you for saying what I would have said regarding Nader. You did it with a great deal more persuasiveness and a great deal less spittle, bile, and profanity than I would have done.
Thanks, Turbulence, I try. Nader is one of the very few public figures I’d be at real risk of punching, for reasons gone into elsewhere. But I figure that frothing wouldn’t actually help much.
Just to add to the activist/netroots/etc. definition expofestarama, being a MoveOn member isn’t a good proxy for “anti-war hippie”, either. I have the impression that Hilzoy is much more representative of MoveOn’s membership than anyone’s version of a dirty f*ckin’ hippy would be.
Drum’s schtick (the ‘heh’ is silent, eh Slarti?) is to think that right-leaning moves by Democrats in campaigns don’t matter.
Let a Dem articulate some plain but apparently transgressive truth (e.g., Dean saying that the capture of Saddam Hussein made this country no safer), and he’s outraged: “tin ear”, “shooting himself in the foot”, etc.
He can also be counted on for pre-emptive, defeatist whining when Republicans take up themes like war on Iran as political cudgels. Rather than fight back on the merits of the issue, he takes for granted the poisonous assumptions in the GOP attack and worries about how it will affect Dems politically.
Very little citation of Drum around the ‘sphere in the last nine months, I notice. Has he been as primary-obsessed as this blog?
Bruce: Jes: I try, at least. 🙂 But I’m also sure that I don’t know things that would matter. All I can do is say “this is how it looks to me now”, and try to keep informed.
Well, what my longer comments, which seem to have got eaten by the kitten, acknowledged was that I was not reading current US political debate in 1999/2000 – I got (I thought temporarily) interested in US politics when the Florida election did such a thorough nosedive, got a swift face-slap when Bush decided the US should do its bit towards killing 65 000 women a year by reinstating the global gag rule, and got… obsessively interested on September 11.
But prior to the news reaching the UK that Jeb Bush had rigged the election in his brother’s favor and appeared to be getting away with it, I took only an ordinary British policy-wonk’s interest in USian politics: and Bush simply came across as a complete light-weight, a thoroughly embarrassing flake.
Has he been as primary-obsessed as this blog
he’s been avoiding it.
we managed to get him to comment on the MoveOn thing, but he basically said Hillary was right (echoing what MNPUndit said at 11:42 AM), and therefore it’s no big deal.
Jes: That’s the way a lot of people in this country saw it, too. Mostly including me, actually. I saw significant differences between Bush and Gore, but I didn’t give anything like now-justified credit to the serious warnings about how bad Bush would likely be. Hence the review every few years, actually; I’ve gone through a really major shift in my political outlook since then.
I think “activist” has become completely meaningless except as an insult and scare-term (as in “activist judges”).
I also considered Bush a lightweight that would be unable to do much damage (and would be stopped by his “experienced” crew, if he tried). I was not that interested in US politics at that time anyway (although the Lewinsky affair made me very prejudiced against the GOP). Naive me, unaware of the evil of Darth Chain-Eye and his merry scum!
I think Bush’s potential to be one of the worst Presidents ever would have remained mostly untapped (and he might also have been a one-termer) if it weren’t for 9/11. IIRC, he wasn’t doing so well politically on Sept 10. Then 9/11 came and for a few years he got to strut around and play “War President”, which he is still doing, except that sometime around or after Katrina the majority of Americans started to see him as the small-minded malicious fraud he really is.
I went to both precinct and county caucuses here in Bellingham, WA, and can vouch that while Obama supporters dominated in terms of numbers, the only ‘pressure’ I saw came from anonymous Clinton supporters who plastered the precinct meeting hall with Clinton posters.
Intimidation? Please.
This, from Kos, sums up the problems with Hillary’s Move-on statemt very nicley IMO.
Re:Hillary’s disagreements with the activist base
My suspicions? We disagree with her on her decision to grant Bush authority to invade Iraq, and her subsequent refusal to atone for that mistake. We also disagree with her on her decision to grant similar authority to Bush to attack Iran — a step I’m convinced became the beginning of the end of her candidacy, reminding party activists that Clinton wasn’t just refusing to apologize for her Iraq vote, but refusing to learn from it.
Refusing to learn–that is exactly my objection to her. It seems obvious to me tht the only reason she ever moved away from supporting the war or being silent about the war is that she had to in order to get the nomination. Just like she suddenly developed doubrts about Nafta in Ohio. Onceelected what going to keep her from regressing to her previous Vichy Dem approach to Iraq and Iran?
How else do you explain the unusually high numbers of Democratic voters who are telling pollsters that they will vote for McCain if their candidate is not the nominee (IIRC 28% of Clinton supporters, Obama’s supporters somewhat less than that), in a contest which is rather less ideological in character than most?
I wonder how the defined “Democratic voters”. There are large number of Rebublicans and independants who are registering as Democrats to influence primaries, but are planning to vote Republican in the general. Did the poll[s] take any notice as to when a respondant joined the Party? It could make a big difference. (This could also impact the “down-ticket” votes, if a signifiacant number of poll respondants are DINOs.)
On the question of Democrats crossing over and voting against Obama or Clinton in the general election, I’d point out that all general elections have crossover votes in both directions, and the numbers are often somewhat higher than one might guess at first glance. I can’t give you a statistic for this, but my best estimate is that 10-15% of registered voters for a particular party are essentially independents, and so up for grabs in the general, depending on what the hot-button issues are.
I would guess that Obama will draw in enough new voters/independent/moderate Republicans to easily offset the Clinton defectors. I do wonder whether McCain can really get the conservative base to come out in force. My sense is that if he does, he will do so by using methods that will turn off a good number of the Clinton defectors, and may even scare them back to Obama. I’d also suggest that many people say they will crossover in the heat of internecine battle, and wake up next day feeling slightly silly.
Finally, we are a long way from the general election, and polls about it should be taken with a good large lump of salt. For all we know, McCain will be found in bed with a dewy-eyed Lebanese youth who turns out to be coordinating the Hamas outreach to Republicans, or perhaps Obama will be discovered in flagrante with Rick Santorum and three Rottweilers. (I should add that I assume that Santorum would have been muzzled to prevent rabies). Consider the impact of those events on the ground, and ask if any of the current polls even make allowances for contingencies.
As an additional note to my post above, I dare say Hillary Clinton might be the nominee, but as matters stand, I very much doubt it. Anyway, if you want to construct a scenario involving her in flagrante.. well, who am I to refuse you equal creative rights?
Been out of the loop lately, and I haven’t had a lot of exposure to J. Jerome, but:
I don’t understand how Jerome isn’t violating the posting rules when he comes up with things like “putzes with intellectual pretentions (ie: Obama-progressives)
this confuses me when the commenter just finished calling a large portion of the conservative base “paleoconservatives.”
Or how about the Republican party described above as . . .the far-right fascists?
But come to think of it, maybe the “paleoconservative” was simply a reference to my namesake. If I’m a paleoconservative, here’s a paleodemocrat voting in Florida in 2000. Lol.
Seriously, Jerome has a point with me about the “Obama echo chamber” thing. I may have overlooked a line of comment, but Publius’ hilarious Lincoln-Douglas debate post aside the silence over a real stinker of a debate is deafening.
Sure, ABC’s “moderation” was ridiculous. But a missed opportunity and a surprisingly weak performance by Obama.
this confuses me when the commenter just finished calling a large portion of the conservative base “paleoconservatives.”
bc, I don’t think that paleoconservatism is an insult at all; it is the name that one group of conservatives calls themselves and their political belief system.
Seriously, Jerome has a point with me about the “Obama echo chamber” thing. I may have overlooked a line of comment, but Publius’ hilarious Lincoln-Douglas debate post aside the silence over a real stinker of a debate is deafening.
I personally don’t think that either candidate’s performance in an egregiously stupid “debate” matters much: the President’s job is not to participate in such “debates”. In any event this has been the 21st debate — do you really think we have learned anything of value from this “debate” that we didn’t already know?
If you think there has been such a terrible silence, why don’t you fill in the void and tell us what we’ve all been too afraid to say…
I was going to note the same thing about paleocons but got beaten to the punch; that said…
If you think there has been such a terrible silence, why don’t you fill in the void and tell us what we’ve all been too afraid to say…
FWIW, that seems excessively snippy to me.
Sorry, I didn’t intend much snippyness. I am sincerely curious about what it is that we are not talking about regarding the last debate that we should be.
But a missed opportunity and a surprisingly weak performance by Obama.
agreed.
and i can see why he’d dodged the one in NC – he has nothing to gain from another ambush like that one, since he’s going to walk away with NC anyway.
this confuses me when the commenter just finished calling a large portion of the conservative base “paleoconservatives.”
Also, Ara used that term not to describe people on this list, (unless bc wants to label himself as a paleoconservative) but basic trends in the Republican party. If there is a more appropriate term for those conservatives who would be lined up again neoconservatives, please let us know.
Wikipedia’s entry on paleoconservatism
There are two Democratic communities: and your side doesn’t like the other side, and the other side feels the same about you. You share one kind of collective identity, they share another.
You know, there are so many more than two Democratic communities.
Rich people are different than poor people. City people are different than country people, and both are different from folks who live in the burbs. Black people are different than white people, and they’re both different than Hispanics, and all of them are different than Asians. White collar vs blue collar. Men and women. Single and married. Etc.
All different. Different goals, different issues, different motivations, different priorities. People are not all the same.
Some folks dislike folks in other groups, and some don’t. Mostly I think folks in one group don’t think all that much about folks in other groups. Most people are too drilled down in their own issues to worry that much about other peoples’.
Jay’s got a point, but he mostly expresses that point by telling everyone how stupid the folks are who aren’t like him, or who aren’t like whoever the hell it is he thinks he’s speaking for. Oh well, that’s Jay. Every family’s got a crazy uncle.
What I really wish would happen would be some kind of conversation about what all of these different constituencies have in common. What makes Democrats Democrats, as opposed to Republicans.
Because somebody’s going to be the nominee, and that’s what they’re going to have to run on.
Thanks –
Great stuff Russell on groups, Russell. Thanks.
Because somebody’s going to be the nominee, and that’s what they’re going to have to run on.
One would think that “Not Bush” should be sufficient, if not necessarily complete. Sadly, I think you’re right.
It seems so weird to me that a sensible, entirely viable Democratic campaign pitch can begin with “We stand for officials who can do their jobs, follow the law, and pay attention to the actual people and situations who threaten our well-being.” It would be happy times if we could take that for granted and go on to something more interesting than third-grade fundamentals, and I wish more Republicans were ashamed enough of their party to have put up a nomination fight on behalf of genuine conservative virtues rather than the pewling mass of testosterone poisoning and blithe disregard for competence and accountability they settled on.
But once again, the Democrats will have to be the party of adulthood, cleaning up after eight years of Republican binging, brawling, and badly handled fetishistic sex. The thanks the Democrats get will, of course, be a constant stream of virulent criticism punctuated by petty efforts to make America unsafe simply because they don’t want the president to get away with anything. How a generation of alleged adults let themselves sign on for that, I don’t get.
If I were in charge of planning a Democratic campign, I’d go for something really basic, like THE ABCs OF AMERICA, and link simple, strong talking points to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – the preamble, the duties of the president and of Congress and of the courts, why treaties matter, and so on. Seriously make a civics intro out of it, since the country needs it. The theme of the whole thing would be what the government owes the people and all the way the people properly exert authority over the government.
pewling mass
Nice phrase.
I’ve been reading the on the ground reports of doorbelling in PA posted on Daily Kos and it is interesting and sad to learn of all the incidents of open and unapologetic racism.
There is a bitterness in some white voters at the lower reaches of the economic heirarchy. Ironically Obam himslef understands this and articulated the point of view of this kind of voter inhis speech on race issues. he pointed out that the descendants of white immigrants quite justifiably feel cheated in the competition for jobs. It hurts for a person who is willing to work to lose in the competition for jobs to someone who gets the job not for being more qualified or in any real sens better but because of affirmative actionn.
The solution is to increase the number of jobs and increase and ease access to training for the jobs for everyone based on econimc need. Obama realizes tht afrimative action needs to be rethought. in an artcle in Newsweek he discuseed this: a reporter asked him if his daughters needed affrimative action and he said that no his daughters were children of privilege. he indicated that he was open to the idea of reforminf affirmative action and moving toward the preception of economic disparity as a class issue rather than a racial one.
I think that once he gets the nomination he needs to raise affirmative action as an issue within the context of increasing economc opportunity for eeryone who is at or near the bottom of the economic heirarchy. In other words low or no cost health care, lots of grants for post highschool educatioon and promotion of “green” jobs to reduce competion for employemt.
In mason county Washingon where i live racism against African Americans isn’t significant mostly because there aren’t enough black people here to be seen as a threat by the white population. However the same bitterness from whites who feel threatened in the search for a living wage is felt but the target is Mexiacan and Central American immigrants and native Americans. Some of the white residents who are the descendents of homestaedrs who moved here over a hundred years ago feel that they can no longer live here and think that part of the problem is the competition form newly arrived immigrants and from local native people. the dynamic is the same–fear of economic survival leading to bitterness which becomes racism but with native people and “Mexicans” as the target.
So addressing the issue of class, not race or ethnicity, by addressing the very real issues of lack of work at a living wage and lack of access to post highschool education whould have the added benefit of reducing racism.
there is another side benefit: reduction fo crime and reduction of the stereotype of certain ethnic groups as a criminal class. In places like Chicago, where my sister lives, there is a lot of racial tension that is focused around crime. In my county the “Mexicans” ( I keep putting that word in quotes because many of the Spanish speakers are in fact Guatemalans) and native people are widely thought of as criminals because they are disportionally represented ontheh plice reprts. However most people given the choice between a living wage joba and a life of crime willchoose the job. Moe employed people does translate into a reduction in crime.
So I agree that restoratin of core America values is a theme that the obama campaign needs to develp. but i also think that his campaign needs to reduce the fear of a black President by very overtly and cncretely addressing the root caused of the bitternes that leads to prejudice: lack of opportunity.
If you think there has been such a terrible silence, why don’t you fill in the void and tell us what we’ve all been too afraid to say…
a) I don’t think the silence was terrible and b) the last thing I would say about commenters here is that they are afraid to say anything. Just avoiding an uncomfortable topic. The excuses on performance were limited to Gibson and George. Horrible questions. But questions never make the debate. Answers do. In short, I thought that both candidates gave a lot of fodder for the general that they didn’t have to give.
Here’s a couple of examples:
I thought Obama had a terrible answer to the capital gains question. He came across as a hard-left redistribution champion. The secretary-investment banker is a terrible analogy IMHO that avoids any discussion of the risk taking that is investment. But the real stinker was his attitude that even in the light of reduced government revenue he would increase capital gains taxes simply so he could redistribute the income in the name of “fairness.” (I am putting aside whether the revenue actually would change as Gibson said). He could, in fact, make us all “fairly” poor if his plan succeeds.
Obama’s answer to the “patriotism” question seemed as flat and unimpassioned as possible and seemed downright unpatriotic. Put it this way: I read the Declaration of Independence to my kids each 4th of July. They are actually liking to listen to the grievances against King George now instead of falling asleep! I realize I am not objective on this question. It’s fine to say that one finds fulfillment and true patriotic emotions as one serves his fellow man attacking earmarks and such. But it doesn’t work for me if there is no feeling. Clinton’s opening statement had the same quality (fake smile, look! There’s the Liberty Bell!). Worst opening statements I’ve heard.
Both answers on Iraq were horrible. Gibson gave them lots of room to maneuver but they both gravitated to the “no matter what we’re pulling out quick.” There was plenty of cover to throw out a good red meat liberal answer based on current conditions and forseeable conditions in the future but still say as President you would always take new facts into consideration. They left no room to maneuver in the general.
As they answered it, if Israel was nuked by Iran and Iran was starting to invade Iraq, we would withdraw. McCain will have a field day.
And Obama saying he would deign to listen to Generals on tactics? Uh, sure you have the last call, but I think I would reserve that as the exception, not the rule. In short, not a whole lot of confidence on the national security issues.
And the whole Ayers thing. I never heard a spirited denunciation. Just: “I was eight-it was forty years ago.” Either a total denunciation was in order or some other response. I was actually expecting an answer that said “hey, Wright and Ayers don’t think straight. But I’m a uniter. I’m going to listen to a whole lot of people I don’t agree with to help them see the light and to make sure I understand their concerns. That’s why I’m different.”
So I don’t see the debate as having not mattered. I saw some really lame answers (where were their advisors?). There were some good answers. Clinton on the “guns and religion” was good. Obama was gracious on the Bosnia gaffe but was maybe too gracious. Obama gave a surprising answer on Israel (that i have trouble reconciling with his answer on Iraq and his wish to talk to everybody in light of Carter’s recent talks with Hamas-I wish they would have asked him if he supported that trip).
Not a definitive list. Just some random samples.