South Carolina debate: Fire All Of Your Guns At Once, Explode Into Space [Archive]

Jason McCullough

01-21-2008, 09:03 PM

I guess Hillary finally took the obvious angle of attack on Obama consistently positioning himself to the right of her and Edwards rhetorically.

Obama on Reagan (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/01/18/obama-criticized-for-reagan-reference/).

"I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not," Obama said. "He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

Hillary from debate (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/us/politics/22truth.html).

The facts are that he has said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote. Now, I personally think they had ideas, but they were bad ideas. They were bad ideas for America.

Not an accurate summary of what he said, obviously. It'll probably turn out bad for Obama regardless, as Democratic primary voters are not going to enjoy hearing over and over how Reagan was right, or people thought he was right, or whatever Obama was trying to say there.

Erik J.

01-21-2008, 09:08 PM

It is difficult to watch politicians sometimes. Once you step foot on the campaign trail, you are almost willing to say anything, regardless of the facts. Just gets damn ugly during these debates.

Erik J.

jeffd

01-21-2008, 09:09 PM

Jason McCullough

01-21-2008, 09:28 PM

I'd be a lot more upset about Hillary doing the lying thing if I thought Obama was actually telling an uncomfortable truth, rather than a fairy tale. If he really believes that was the story with Reagan it's a perfect summation of everything I don't like about him. I think Reagan got elected and set the agenda because Carter fucked up big time, southerners bailed on the Democratic party for the GOP - mostly for racist reasons - and long-term demographic trends swung political power from the Rustbelt to the Sunbelt. No bullshit about Reagan on entrepreneurship and personality responsibility required. Seriously, was he awake in the 1980s? The decade of robber barons and the death of blue-collar America?

They're all pissing me off, I swear. Obama will get steamrolled with his happy come-together talk, or worse, he actually believes it, Hillary's a boring centrist, and Edwards felt the need to call Hillary a crybaby girl.

NoWayJose

01-21-2008, 10:19 PM

So you people think Obama talks about Reagan instilling "optimism," "clarity," "dynamism," and "accountability," and think he's just reporting facts, not expressing some amount of admiration for the man? For all his lofty speeches, Obama panders with the best of them. Yesterday he was practically hanging himself on the cross with all his talk about coming to Jesus as a young man. Whoa, South Carolina, here come all the Christians! Are you ready?

Lum

01-21-2008, 10:36 PM

Hillary's summation isn't so much "not accurate" as it is bald faced lying. The debate tonight really did a lot to dampen the good feelings I've been having toward her lately.

I think the worst part was when she gleefully explained "oh, we're just getting warmed up!".

She really, really enjoys the elbows-out smashmouth campaigning, and it's going to remind people about the parts of the Clinton era that weren't all moderation and booming economy. At any rate, it reinforced that there was one person at that debate I wouldn't be voting for come the general election.

That being said, Obama wasn't much better - it was pretty clear he intended to come out fists wailing as well, he's just not as good at it. He would have done a lot better to stay above the mudslinging; Hillary would have scored the points on her list and it would have posed a pretty clear choice between that and Obama's usual debating style (substance over form).

Edwards came out *way* ahead.

Lum

01-21-2008, 10:47 PM

Obama will get steamrolled with his happy come-together talk, or worse, he actually believes it, Hillary's a boring centrist, and Edwards felt the need to call Hillary a crybaby girl.

That "happy come-together talk" - which I'm pretty sure Obama *does* believe, or at least does a really excellent job of faking - is precisely what the country needs. Or we can have 4 to 8 more years of the Blumenthal Clintons vs the Rove Republicans and 50.001% razor-thin focus-micropolled majorities decided by drunken Palm Beach voters who may or may not have meant to vote for Pat Buchanan.

And Hillary's only a centrist as long as the polls tell her to be. I suspect a HRC presidency, based on her record pre-Senate career (which I think we all can agree was basically an 8 year Presidential campaign) would be as far to the left as GWB was to the right, and equally as divisive.

But yeah, Edwards is a jerk. We can agree on that!

Check out the National Review's blog (http://corner.nationalreview.com/) tonight - they are almost Obama fans besides themselves. "Well, an Obama presidency would be totally disastrous, but, uh, he makes sense and I'm not sure what to believe any more HOLD ME".

Anders Hallin

01-21-2008, 10:56 PM

I think what Obama was trying to say there was pretty clear - Reagan successfully drove the country to the right by getting lots of independents and even Democrats on board with his programs. If we want to drive the country back to the left we have to do the same thing.

Hillary's summation isn't so much "not accurate" as it is bald faced lying. The debate tonight really did a lot to dampen the good feelings I've been having toward her lately.
That's not the thing that she was referencing, though, but rather this:

"I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10-15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom,"[

noun

01-22-2008, 05:37 AM

I say we try four years without any President at all and see what happens. To hell with all of them.

Anders Hallin

01-22-2008, 05:47 AM

I'm disheartened by how quickly people throw their hands in the air in disgust after some snappy back-and-forth. Come on, people, it's a contest! You really want someone who couldn't handle that level of confrontation in the White House? As long as a Democrat wins the general election, I'll be happy to know they made it through the steel bath of the primaries.
Seriously, it's like people don't enjoy politics at all.

noun

01-22-2008, 05:54 AM

No, that's fine, it's just that the current crop of candidates ALL SUCK.

extarbags

01-22-2008, 06:03 AM

Even if that's true (and I don't think it is), so what? Just pick a team and root for them, like the Super Bowl. Presidential campaign politics is the greatest sport of all, and there's only a season once every four years, so start enjoying it.

Ben Sones

01-22-2008, 06:28 AM

So you people think Obama talks about Reagan instilling "optimism," "clarity," "dynamism," and "accountability," and think he's just reporting facts, not expressing some amount of admiration for the man?

He is definitely expressing admiration... of those qualities. Here's an exercise: take Hillary's quote, and replace "the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years" with "optimism, clarity, and accountability." Now try to figure out how to make that sound like an insult.

All Obama said was that Reagan was an inspiring figure in a way that subsequent presidents have not been--he had the air of a leader rather than a politician--and he's absolutely right. And I hated most of Reagan's policies, personally, but that's clearly not what Obama was talking about.

"I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10-15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom."

But see, this also strikes me as a fair assessment of one of the Democratic party's biggest shortcomings in recent years. Many people, on both the right and the left, have said exactly the same thing: today's Democratic party doesn't seem to have a coherent ideology or platform, and they too often just fall back on the message "We're not Republicans!" It seems to me that a willingness to look at your opponents and acknowledge both their failings and their successes is more of a strength than a weakness.

forgeforsaken

01-22-2008, 07:05 AM

Anders Hallin

01-22-2008, 07:11 AM

Given the American electoral system, though, I would put the blame squarely on the game, not the player. It's a Schumpeterian circus of grand proportions, and as long as you, the voter, remembers the basic agenda of the candidates, I think you can safely ignore a lot of electioneering. In fact, in these days of media narratives, it's probably wiser and more fitting with Democratic ideals to do so.

JeffL

01-22-2008, 07:12 AM

What Obama said about Reagan was exactly true, in spite of what a lot of people hate to admit. Carter years equalled a national depression, Reagan came in and did re-instill a sense of hope and optimism in the country, particulary in his first term. You can hate him and his politics all you like, you can refuse to admit that the "Reagan Democrats" had anything to do with his style, but you're sticking your head in the sand if you do that. Obama is correct in saying that Reagan changed the atmosphere of the nation in a better direction, even if you hate Reagan's politics. It's a sign of how completely partisan we've become that a Democrat cannot even acknowledge that without being trashed.

And he's also correct in that the GOP has been the party coming forward with a coherent platform and set of ideas, such as the concepts that they brought in with the Gingrich "contract." Arguing about whether they were good ideas or whether anyone in America voted for them is beside the point. As Ben noted, lately the Democrats have been all about vote for us because the other guys suck (and it worked in the Democrat takeover of Congress because the other guys sucked SOOOOO much!) but even within the party there has been complaint that they have not presented a set of ideas for the nation to rally around.

I think Obama, when Hillary responded to one of his comments about Bill's lies by saying "He's not here - I am" (which is her standard line when someone says something about Bill in the debates,) should have replied "well, since you've got Bill doing most of your campaigning and attacking for you, perhaps you should just go all the way and have him here debating for you." That's unfortunately a "meaner" approach than Obama likes to take, but I would have loved to hear him use it.

Lum

01-22-2008, 07:16 AM

That's pretty close to what he said.

CLINTON: Well, I'm here. He's not. And...

OBAMA: OK. Well, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes.

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Well, you know, I think we both have very passionate and committed spouses who stand up for us. And I'm proud of that.

I think him going further and saying "well, why don't you have Bill debate for you" would have backfired *hard* - it sounds too much like "aww, little lady needs her big husband to debate for her". And Clinton is not shy at all about falling back on the "poor helpless female naif being beaten on by big burly men" ploy for sympathy.

metta

01-22-2008, 07:20 AM

JeffL

01-22-2008, 07:21 AM

That's almost word for word what he said.
I think him going further and saying "well, why don't you have Bill debate for you" would have backfired *hard* - it sounds too much like "aww, little lady needs her big husband to debate for her". And Clinton is not shy at all about falling back on the "poor helpless female naif being beaten on by big burly men" ploy for sympathy.

I'm not so sure about that. First of all, the comment about we both have spouses who stand up for us was almost an apology for the shot, which I don't think he should have softened. I think making the point that she's on that podium because her last name is Clinton and she has a former President doing her attacks for her and putting in people's minds that she needs Bill to help her is a valid political move. Especially since Bill's so out front now, we see at least as much footage of him as we do her now.

extarbags

01-22-2008, 07:22 AM

Oh man, that line is awesome.

Anti-Bunny

01-22-2008, 08:12 AM

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/Hillary_taunts_Obama.html

"I think what we saw last night was that he’s very frustrated – Senator Obama is very frustrated," Clinton said this morning. "The events of the last 10 or so days, particularly the outcomes in New Hampshire and Nevada, have apparently convinced him to adopt a different strategy."

Clinton spoke at a D.C. press conference called to respond to what she called "a global economic crisis," at which she pressed President Bush to respond to with a blend of spending, regulation, and rebates. (Obama plans a speech on the economy later this morning in Greenville, S.C.

But she seemed to relish the platform to go after Obama's debate performance last night.

"He has a hard time responding to questions about his record," she said. "The Republicans are not going to have any compunctions about asking anybody anything."

She said Obama had come with only rehearsed answers.

"They were so rehearsed that he kept on insisting that I had mentioned President Reagan in what I had said when I didn't mention President Reagan," she said.

She sought to engage on one specific point, which she said Obama hadn't responded to: "In 2004 he said he agreed with the way George Bush was waging the war."

She also backed away from suggestions she would campaign in Flordia. "I intend to follow the pledge and abide by the pledge," she said.

Linoleum

01-22-2008, 08:27 AM

Yesterday he was practically hanging himself on the cross with all his talk about coming to Jesus as a young man. Whoa, South Carolina, here come all the Christians! Are you ready?

And yet Bill Maher doesn't have the balls to call Obama schizophrenic...

Lum

01-22-2008, 08:38 AM

I don't envy you all your task this Fall.

I've seen 40 years of elections in the U.K. and Canada combined, and believe firmly that a clear and electable third party option would do so much good for your country; good things that are so nebulous and hard to see the edges of until the field widens and choices actually become possible. I think only having two parties hurts America in all kinds of places, and most damaging is the idea that there are only two sides to any issue.

Good luck, folks.

Doesn't the UK really only have 2 viable parties? The Liberal Democrats aren't quite the non-factor third parties are here, but third party runs in the past (Perot, Anderson) have reached the 15% or so threshhold that the LibDems usually poll at. And there's plenty of examples of multipolar parliamentary systems working really badly. It keeps Israel pretty dysfunctional, just as an example.

A Perot movement could have produced a viable third party were Perot himself not such a paranoid loon, and there are rumblings that Michael Bloomberg could make a 3rd party run this year if the Democrats and Republicans continue to wallow in disarray. (Thanks to the expense of mass media, viable third party runs in the US tend to be the luxury of billionaires.)

VegasRobb

01-22-2008, 08:52 AM

Well so much for a unified front.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 09:00 AM

What Obama said about Reagan was exactly true, in spite of what a lot of people hate to admit.

Yes, because there's such elaborate polling evidence that people voted for Reagan based on his sense of hope and optimism.

We can each believe whatever we what; I'll be more than a little surprised if the majority of Democrats agree with you.

That "happy come-together talk" - which I'm pretty sure Obama *does* believe, or at least does a really excellent job of faking - is precisely what the country needs. Or we can have 4 to 8 more years of the Blumenthal Clintons vs the Rove Republicans and 50.001% razor-thin focus-micropolled majorities decided by drunken Palm Beach voters who may or may not have meant to vote for Pat Buchanan.

And Hillary's only a centrist as long as the polls tell her to be. I suspect a HRC presidency, based on her record pre-Senate career (which I think we all can agree was basically an 8 year Presidential campaign) would be as far to the left as GWB was to the right, and equally as divisive.

I don't understand how you get this. Bill Clinton didn't govern at 50% + 1; he governed from the dead center. Hillary hasn't been especially liberal in the Senate. Nothing in her background makes me think she's going to suddenly turn into a bloodthirsty partisan, rather than the centrist policy wonk record she's established for years and years. More interestingly, I don't see how if the polls tell you the center has moved to the left, it's actually not centrist to move....to the left. What do you expect from a "centrist?" The entire point is that they don't make big waves and work within the bounds they think society has. Society moved left, Bill Clinton moved left; they moved right, he moved right.

But see, this also strikes me as a fair assessment of one of the Democratic party's biggest shortcomings in recent years. Many people, on both the right and the left, have said exactly the same thing: today's Democratic party doesn't seem to have a coherent ideology or platform, and they too often just fall back on the message "We're not Republicans!" It seems to me that a willingness to look at your opponents and acknowledge both their failings and their successes is more of a strength than a weakness.

An assessment of the 1980s Democrats, sure, but this George Will line is pretty far past it's sell-by date. The 1990s Democrats were the party of centrist technical competence, which while not particularly inspiring or an agenda for lots of change, it was a coherent political platform. After the stock market crash and Iraq finished off the 1990s "we run the world and we're rich" triumphalism, I'd say neither party has a unified explanation of what they want anymore. The Republicans are limited to hating gays and Muslims; the Democrats looking around for something to fix everything that doesn't actually involve heavy lifting.

jeffd

01-22-2008, 09:03 AM

Yes, because there's such elaborate polling evidence that people voted for Reagan based on his sense of hope and optimism.

We can each believe whatever we what; I'll be more than a little surprised if the majority of Democrats agree with you.

We argued about this some last night - but I keep seeing you conflate "Reagan's election" with "Reagan's legislative victories." Is there any particular reason for that?

jeffd

01-22-2008, 09:08 AM

Oh and this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ElectoralCollege1980-Large.png) seems to lend some credence to what Obama's been saying.

Dirt

01-22-2008, 09:12 AM

The bottom line is that Obama was dumb in the first place to invoke Ronald Reagan. It might have been smart in the general election to get the Conservative Independent vote, but this is the Democratic Primary, you're trying to get people of your own party to vote for you. This is another indication of how inexperienced Obama is and how scared I would be about how badly he might screw things up the first couple years on the job as President.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 09:15 AM

I don't see "we voted for a message of optimism and hope" anywhere on that EC map, maybe you can enlighten me as to where it's hidden.

I combine Reagan's election and Reagan's stuff that got through Congress because IMHO presidents get stuff through congress because either congress agrees with them in the first place, or congress critters are terrified of opposing the President and losing their seat as a result. It's largely the same mechanic - how much do people like the President and what he's proposing, vs. how much do they like their pissant local Congressman?

On Lum's 50%+1 partisanship note, there's been a surprising amount of data showing that almost all the partisan movement has occurred on the GOP side. I can't find the killer graph I'm looking for. Here's one story (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0406.glastris.html), here's another (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.drum.html).

Here (http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2007/08/the-high-cost-o.html) on the history of partisanship in the US. There's this one that shows the history of the partisan distribution of Congress - how far members are away from the center, and that almost all of the movement has been the GOP going way over to the right - but I can't find it.

jeffd

01-22-2008, 09:25 AM

Sure, but obviously something caused Reagan to win that big in '80. He didn't just win; he crushed Carter. And in 1984 his margin of victory was even bigger.

The evidence seems to indicate that people liked Reagan; it indicates that his support was a) broad and b) increased after four years. The fact is the guy enjoyed more support than Bill Clinton ever did, and arguably had more legislative success than Clinton did.

Frankly you're really not doing anything to show that Obama's remarks were inaccurate. Were they tactically stupid? Probably; hardcore Dems really hate hearing about Reagan - as you're rather effectively demonstrating. :)

Dirt

01-22-2008, 09:29 AM

1980: Iran Hostage Crisis.

1984: Geraldine Ferraro.

Ben Sones

01-22-2008, 09:31 AM

I don't see "we voted for a message of optimism and hope" anywhere on that EC map, maybe you can enlighten me as to where it's hidden.

Something caused almost all of the blue states to jump ship and vote for him. Are you honestly arguing that it was his policies?

jeffd

01-22-2008, 09:32 AM

That was undoubtedly a factor, as was the failed Desert One rescue. You can absolutely chalk 1980 up to discontent with Carter as much as Reagan's appeal.

So how'd Reagan increase his popularity in 1984?

Dirt

01-22-2008, 09:33 AM

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 09:35 AM

Using that logic, jeff, the US loved LBJ in 1964 Nixon in 1972 for their sunny optimism.

Ben, I think a lot of the problem with analyzing Reagan's victories today is that the modern definition of "blue state" is meaningless before 1988 or so. Look at the results for NY here (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html), for example:

1988 GOP -4
1984 GOP +8
1980 GOP +3
1976 GOP -4
1972 GOP +17
1968 GOP -5 (Wallace got 5)
1964 GOP -37 (Sheesh)
1960 GOP -5

It's basically a leans Democratic state over that period, but not the reliable bastion of today - look at the dead-even election of 1960 as a baseline. GOP candidacies that do really well are going to win it, but it's not going to go GOP in a "normal" election.

The problem is that there's very few "normal" elections in the last half of the twentieth century. I'd say the reason why is that the Democrats got their ass handed to them 1968 to 1988 foremost because their coalition was disintegrating over race. This triggered the long-term realignment process that gave us the more ideological party coalitions you have today. That showed up most significantly in the south flipping to the Democrats, but the upset about race, busing, etc. wasn't something limited to Dixie. Nixon spent a lot of time mining votes from the non-South by going after busing, which wasn't limited to the South - Boston, Detroit, etc.

Lots of other stuff mattered - the inflation-fueled tax revolt, the vagaries of the cold war, income distribution, the rise of evangelicalism, etc. The one thing that always jumps out from the long-term data on polling, though, is race.

jeffd

01-22-2008, 09:43 AM

BlueJackalope

01-22-2008, 09:48 AM

Lum

01-22-2008, 09:51 AM

Geraldine Ferraro. People just weren't ready for a woman in such a high position.

Wildly incorrect. Reagan was still popular (Iran-Contra had not yet hit), and Mondale was a very poor campaigner. Ferraro wasn't a factor.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 09:57 AM

Jason: I'm not saying he was elected for his sunny optimism. What I'm saying is that we have a few facts that are beyond dispute:

1) Reagan was elected handily in 1980
2) He was successful in pursuing an agenda that's far more conservative than anything since before the New Deal.
3) He was re-elected in 1984 by massive margins.

Something or group of things is responsible for these facts. Probably "Sunny optimism" is a simplistic overstatement (although Reagan's optimism was undoubtedly a component of his appeal; if you deny that then you're just being willfully blind).

See, these sound entirely sufficient to me:

1. The Democratic coalition was disintegrating and people were really pissed about racial issues.
2. Carter had to run on a terrible economic and foreign policy situation in 1980.
3. Mondale ran an unbelievably terrible campaign in 1984, the economy was fine, and the Cold War was calm.

It's not like Reagan was immune to events; Iran Contra dropped him from 67% to 46%, although he eventually recovered his previous approval.

jeffd

01-22-2008, 09:57 AM

Wildly incorrect. Reagan was still popular (Iran-Contra had not yet hit), and Mondale was a very poor campaigner. Ferraro wasn't a factor.

Pretty much.

While I get why liberals are so traumatized over Reagan, I think that it's kind of self defeating. It almost seems as if there's a kneejerk need to not only reject Reagan's ideas as bad (which they arguably were), but to reject the idea that they could have even possibly been appealing to voters (which they arguably were). Hence we have Paul Krugman throwing hissy fits over Obama's comments about Reagan's accomplishments relative to Clinton and Jason trying to boil his popularity down to appealing to racists. From my point of view it's kind of silly, and also rather self-defeating. Reagan was a tremendously successful politician; he moved the country politically in a way no one has since maybe FDR. Democrats should try to understand how he did it an then emulate his example.

Dirt

01-22-2008, 10:02 AM

I'd rather someone with the popularity of JFK and the political skill of Bill Clinton.

Lizard_King

01-22-2008, 10:05 AM

See, these sound entirely sufficient to me:

They sound sufficient to you because they fit in with your current narrative where Republicans succeed only when faced with Democratic incompetence. Not because, god forbid, they have occasionally marketed the more popular product. No one is even arguing for better or anything of the sort; all they have said is popular, and even that is impossible for you to accept. And you say it's Washington that's are out of touch with reality, right?

Mark Asher

01-22-2008, 10:09 AM

Geraldine Ferraro. People just weren't ready for a woman in such a high position.

It wasn't her. It was the lackluster appeal of Mondale, who also made the terrible mistake of pledging to raise taxes. I remember watching him say that and wondering just what in the hell he was thinking?

noun

01-22-2008, 10:11 AM

It wasn't her. It was the lackluster appeal of Mondale, who also made the terrible mistake of pledging to raise taxes. I remember watching him say that and wondering just what in the hell he was thinking?

That and the especially poor timing of her husband being caught in some financial wrongdoing. She had a choice between being complicit or clueless.

Mark Asher

01-22-2008, 10:11 AM

To me, Hilary is becoming more unappealing as this wears on. I may consider voting for someone other than her if McCain gets the nomination -- I might go third party or something. I think she loses some votes that other Democrats wouldn't lose.

jeffd

01-22-2008, 10:14 AM

Mark: There's a lot of people like that. I'd been warming slightly to Hillary (though Obama is still my pick) over the past month or two. She did a lot to put a damper on that though.

JeffL

01-22-2008, 10:33 AM

I don't see "we voted for a message of optimism and hope" anywhere on that EC map, maybe you can enlighten me as to where it's hidden.

Jason, how old were you in 1980?

You can read all manner of data, but if you were living as an adult at that time, this isn't even debatable. I freaking WORKED for Carter, and it was still so obvious at the time the difference in attitude, in the overall mood of the country. If you asked me in 1980 why I voted for Reagan, after having worked on Carter's campaign, I'd have answered a poll by citing the sucky economy, the feeling of international incompetence, etc. And that's the data you'd read today depending on who compiled what data, etc.

But the fact is that I, and millions of other Americans, listened to Reagan and his campaign and his appearance of incredible optimism and belief in America and the American people, and he just made you feel GREAT about what we could be as a nation. You just can't understand the mood of a nation or the impact of a mood from reading polls from 30 plus years ago.

Remember what we'd been through. Vietnam was very, very fresh, the humiliation and anger felt by the nation having to admit, no matter what the spin, that we'd lost 50,000 people, many more wounded and maimed, and watching the North Vietnamese marching into Saigon and raising that flag. Every single one of us knew someone personally who'd been killed or wounded or somehow significantly impacted. That was in 1975. I remember my dad, who was the most gung ho positive man in the world when it came to his country and his Air Force, coming back from Vietnam a changed man - he saw so many stupid things done, so many wasted lives, that he was truly shaken and angry at his government. Nixon had disgraced the White House, no one trusted Washington, it was a place that had lied to us about Vietnam from Kennedy through Nixon, and now there were actual criminal acts going on in the White House. Gerald Ford takes over for a couple of years, a lame duck.

The nation was depressed, no one looked at Washington with anything but skepticism and mistrust, 50,000 families had buried their loved ones and watched the enemy win on Prime Time TV, Carter took over because no one was going to vote for someone tied to Nixon or anyone else from Washington, and then, in the midst of years of depression and gloom, he leads us into 18% mortgages and a rotten economy and then on top of THAT, this country called Iran takes a bunch of our people hostage and dares us to do anything about it. And we don't. We stand around, with the blood of Vietnam still fresh on our clothes, and watch this country thumb their nose at us and dare us to do anything while they hold our people hostage. We make one attempt, and look even MORE helpless and incompetent when that attempt just kills more of our own people. We as a nation had our heads hung low.

Then along comes this guy Reagan, and he runs on a campaign that is basically saying, come on America, we're still a great nation, our best is ahead of us, lets pull together and make this nation great again. And Reagan pulls it off - he makes people lift their heads up and say, hey, I believe this guy can lead us there, he's so damned upbeat and optimistic, etc. Yeah, sounds silly, but that's why you had to have lived it and been there and felt the mood. I worked for Carter, and yet I was pulled into this super positive, optimistic campaign of Reagans. I knew a lot of Democrats that got pulled in too (hell, I WAS a registered, hardcore Democrat at the time.) And he ended up winning by a HUGE margin, and bringing in the Reagan Democrats.

And the mood of the nation when he took over was incredibly upbeat, in a way that most of us had a hard time remembering.

jeffd

01-22-2008, 10:38 AM

Jeff: Good post, and it jibes with a lot of what I've been told by my parents (I was barely a year old when Reagan was elected in 1980).

That being said, this whole argument over optimism is a sidetrack. Obama's comment was just that Reagan moved the country politically in a way that neither Clinton nor Nixon could achieve, and I honestly think that's indisputable. Maybe he did it by being relentlessly optimistic, maybe he did it through ritual sacrifice of liberal chickens. Either way there's a lesson to be learned there - learned and hopefully applied by the next president in moving the country onto a more progressive track.

Handwaving away Reagan's successes as just a byproduct of racism isn't really at all fruitful.

Funkula

01-22-2008, 10:44 AM

And the mood of the nation when he took over was incredibly upbeat, in a way that most of us had a hard time remembering.
I think your post is excellent (and very informative to someone who was -1 years old in 1980), but I'd like to point out that a lot of why people don't remember that rhetoric of hope and unity is the way that he utterly squandered it in the eight years following. Not to nearly the same degree as the current tenant, but in the long run I don't think Reagan created any goodwill outside his base.

extarbags

01-22-2008, 10:48 AM

I think your post is excellent (and very informative to someone who was -1 years old in 1980), but I'd like to point out that a lot of why people don't remember that rhetoric of hope and unity is the way that he utterly squandered it in the eight years following. Not to nearly the same degree as the current tenant, but in the long run I don't think Reagan created any goodwill outside his base.

Agreed, but he did stay popular. It goes to show you how ill-informed and swayed by style over substance the American populace is, I guess. Carter does the best he can with some bad breaks and accomplishes a massive foreign policy objective the likes of which hasn't been seen since and is reviled, and Reagan runs a decade rife with corruption, scandal, and greed and is still invoked as though he were the second coming of Christ himself.

JeffL

01-22-2008, 10:53 AM

America is absolutely swayed more by style than anything else, particular these days when so much of what people base their vote on is television based.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 11:10 AM

I'm not arguing that Reagan wasn't popular; of course he was. I'm arguing about why he was popular, and I don't think it was some candy cane story about how America wanted a unifying uplifting vision of hope.

Jeff Lackey, I don't see how your description of the 1980 election ("everything sucked!") disagrees with mine, other than the specific channel that translated that into Reagan winning. Any damn GOP candidate could have taken out Carter that year; it's just how far the rubble would bounce. I'm not disagreeing that "this sucks, we can do better" was a positive for him. What I am disagreeing with is what the central story of Reagan's popularity was. Was his ever-mutating popular stump story about a Chicago welfare queen part of his message that America's a great nation?

On a side note, bit of poking around reveals that Reagan's rhetoric on Vietnam in 1980 actually dropped his poll numbers. Third (http://www.google.com/search?q=reagan+veteran%27s+convention+vietnam+nob le+cause&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a), fourth, and fifth links here. Eventually Reagan and the conservatives did a incredible sales job with Vietnam, practically turning the country's opinion of the war around, but that came long after the election.

Mark Asher

01-22-2008, 11:12 AM

Reagan came in when interest rates were sky high and they came down. He cut taxes and fueled the economy with record deficit spending, and of course the bill for that didn't come through until Bush Senior was in office. Reagan was just a likable fellow, too.

Clinton, the Bill version, is very similar. Likable, and the economy did well under him.

I also think both Clinton and Reagan valued getting things done so they would compromise to some extent, Clinton probably more than Reagan. The voters appreciate congenial leaders who appear to have some flexibility.

Hilary, OTOH, is really unlikable.

Dirt

01-22-2008, 11:17 AM

I remember that stuff. My mom was totally into Reagan too and she barely spoke English at the time (we'd only been in the USA for 2 years). My dad was and still is a Republican. As many older Chinese people are. For myself, I was for Carter though I was 7 years old. There was just something about Reagan I found distrustful.

Glenn

01-22-2008, 11:25 AM

I'd rather someone with the popularity of JFK and the political skill of Bill Clinton.Also, the legs of Terrell Owens, Tom Brady's head, and the pungent musk of the one and only Mike Ditka.

Anaxagoras

01-22-2008, 11:31 AM

Was his [Reagan's] ever-mutating popular stump story about a Chicago welfare queen part of his message that America's a great nation?

No, it was a part of his message of "America... come on. Pull yourself together. We're a great nation, and can do better than this." Which is exactly what Jeff said in his post.

Man, I saw parts of the Democratic debate on youtube. Wow. She just lost my vote, permanently. What a fucking worthless waste of humanity. Lying through her teeth, twisting Obama's words into what they clearly didn't mean.... her performance last night means I'll no longer hold my nose & vote for her if she gets nominated. What a disappointment.

Dirt

01-22-2008, 11:31 AM

If it's a woman, I'd want her to have fire's ass.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 11:46 AM

Lum

01-22-2008, 11:58 AM

Hey, we get you don't like Reagan, it's fine. There was plenty of the Reagan administration that cratered (Hi Ollie North, how ya doin). But that doesn't take away from the essential point that Reagan's sunny optimism was an anodyne both to Carter's glum "malaise" and Mondale's shrill caricatures ("The Cold War is going to kill us, Star Wars is a waste of money, and your taxes is going up." Well, he was 2 for 3 eventually!) which won elections. Saying that Reagan's campaign style had nothing to do with it is, well, kind of patently ridiculous given the number of states Mondale took in 1984 (hint: less than 2, more than 0) And the parallels between the atmosphere in Washington in 1979 and 2007 are pretty obvious.

Reagan was a charismatic uniter who pushed a hard-right foreign policy and a deficit-generating domestic policy. Obama is a charismatic uniter who is behind a moderate foreign policy and fiscal conservatism. For some reason I think Obama's the better deal.

Anaxagoras

01-22-2008, 12:01 PM

When Jesse Helms tell with stories designed to appeal to prejudices about shiftless black people, it's because he's either a racist or pandering to racists. When Ronald Reagan does it, it's part of his message that America can, and should, do better.

I usually hate that "fixed that for you" bullshit the kids nowadays do, but I think it's the most effective way to show you the problem with your summary. So long as you continue to insist on your narrative, you simply won't understand what's going on in politics. Politics in a democracy involve the collective narratives of all the voters. And although the welfare queen story had racist undertones, and was definitely hating on the poor, the takeaway message that Reagan was trying to convey (and which the people ate up) was that there's no need to have these welfare queens in our midst... we can do better.

Keep in mind, I detest Reagan. I'm not saying this because I agree with the sentiment expressed. I'm saying it because it's important to understand the actual narratives being used so that you can really understand what's going on. Shoehorning events into a narrative that you find convenient doesn't help anyone's understanding of events.

Dirt

01-22-2008, 12:03 PM

You show me a vastly successful woman and I'll show you a bitch.

AaronSofaer

01-22-2008, 12:12 PM

You show me a vastly successful woman and I'll show you a bitch.

You show me a Dirt post and I'll show you a retarded attempt at trolling.

Dirt

01-22-2008, 12:13 PM

You show me a Dirt post and I'll show you a retarded attempt at trolling.
Pfft. Ever work in Corporate America?

Nick Walter

01-22-2008, 12:14 PM

EDIT: My bad, I should know better than to feed the troll.

AaronSofaer

01-22-2008, 12:15 PM

Pfft. Ever work in Corporate America?

Yes.

Tell me again how a Taiwanese Chinese has so much experience in Corporate America? Your little story of where you're from changes every time.

ravenight

01-22-2008, 12:15 PM

Any damn GOP candidate could have taken out Carter that year; it's just how far the rubble would bounce.

This reminds me of people who have tried to explain to me that the economic prosperity we enjoyed under Bill Clinton was an inevitable market cycle. You are saying that it was inevitable that the GOP would win in a landslide, then push a hardcore conservative fiscal agenda through a democratically controlled house? That an inevitable outcome of a weak Carter administration was the birth of a grass-roots movement based on religion and a healthy distate for the New Deal? You think that the "decade of robber barons and the death of blue collar America" was a response to Carter that would have happened regardless of who ran? Please, hate Reagan as much as you want (and I hope it's a lot), but even if your hands are clean, don't pretend the rest of the voting populace didn't buy two heaping scoops of his BS and come back for more.

As Obama said, Reagan had a lasting effect on the political climate of the country that we still feel today. You can say that the combination of Carter's incompetence and Reagan's agenda had the effect if you want (though I doubt he was incompetent on the same scale as, say, W), but it doesn't change the fact that properly guiding the anger and dissatisfaction of the country when there is an opportunity to do so can significantly change the face of politics. If Carter had done it, we would have been much farther to the left than we are now.

What Reagan did was to find a way to reach the people who were on the other side of the isle, and convince them not just to vote for him as the lesser of two evils in a single election, but to work with him to change the country for years after that. The methods he used (fear and racism vs. sunshine and optimism) are not nearly as important as the fact that he tried to do it and succeeded. We have another opportunity to do this, and we have to choose whether we elect the chameleon who just wants to be in charge and stay popular (which is pretty much a recipe for a lackluster presidency and another round of 50%+1 politics), or the leader who wants to actually set the agenda instead of hunting for it.

Does Obama beat McCain in Nov? I don't know. Does he have the ability to actually shift the country's political opinion away from the evangelical-driven Smith-worshipping crazy town it's becoming? I can't say. But he's the one who is campaign on the platform of trying to do that. He's the one who wants to stop accepting the premise and start changing people's perceptions.

Mister Widget

01-22-2008, 12:21 PM

Keep in mind, I detest Reagan. I'm not saying this because I agree with the sentiment expressed. I'm saying it because it's important to understand the actual narratives being used so that you can really understand what's going on. Shoehorning events into a narrative that you find convenient doesn't help anyone's understanding of events.
Well put. I remember the Reagan years all too well, and I'm no fan of his either, but you can't deny that his sunny, happy-go-lucky demeanor was a huge part of why he was a political success. Veiled racism, as seen in his "welfare queen" stories, was certainly part of his appeal in some regions, but saying racism was central to his popularity is just plain wrong. It was part of what was so maddening about his success; you'd find yourself talking to people who disagreed with his policies, but still approved of his presidency, apparently for no other reason than that he gave off a warm, grandfatherly air. It gave me a lasting appreciation for just how shallow people's thinking processes can be when they go into a voting booth.

BlueJackalope

01-22-2008, 12:52 PM

I'm in agreement with the Jeffs on Reagan as a change agent. For good or ill. I'm old enough to know that there is no doubt that he moved major portions of the country to the GOP. Even, especially in the case of lower-class whites, against their own self interests. I want to believe Obama could do the same thing for the Democrats. I believe democratic policies are better for the nation as a whole, a non-divisive, popular, uplifiting leader is what is needed to sell those policies.

Obama's statement was not so much pro-Reagan, as it was anti-Clinton, and that is why Bill has gone berzerk.

But he is right.

Clinton triangulated, calculated and prevaricated his way to eight sucessful and deeply unpleasant years in office (my favorite Onion headline - unfortunately prescient - was from Jan '01 - Bush,"Our Long Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over"*.) Not all Clinton's fault, I agree, the wingnuts hated him form the word go and the GOP disgraced themselves when them impeached him. But regardless of who's fault it was Bill's presidency managed to so sharply divide the country that the Supreme Court felt it was justified in coming off the mountain and make a baldly partisian decision and throw the recount to W. I do not believe Hillary (and Bill) returning to the White House will do anything other than return us to that era of bad feelings.

If you don't belive that, look what the Clinton's have managed to do just in the Democratic primary. Are they running a positive, uplifting, truth-filled, issues campaign? Or are they trying to drag Obama into the mud, using surragates to attack him, twisting his words and trying to paint him as the "black" candidate (a move that will hurt the democrats in the general election if he is the ultimate nominee) and genreally appealing to fear (and a few maudlin sniffles) to win?

Imagine that she wins the general election (I do not think that is a given) how could she get anything done, other than to appeal to division?

*Serious, this shit is freaky read it:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 01:07 PM

I guess I'm not expressing myself clearly enough.

I'm not arguing against Reagan's effective skills as a politician or his abiilty to express a sunny, upbeat demeanor (when occasionally pandering to racists). I'm arguing that Reagan chiefly got elected by his margins, and got his agenda through, because the South was trending Republican, and the chief reason for that was racism. I suppose a terrible GOP politician or masterful Democratic politican might have shunted off that realignment, but I don't have the slighest idea how, and the trendline was pretty clear starting with Nixon. There's tons of data out there about how the Democratic coalition splitting was rooted in racial issues, and the clear and enormous effect that had on elections. It's non-controversial. Once you start with that, the progression to a conservative GOP leader getting elected and passing a bunch of conservative bills is straightforward.

Sure, once you have that, he capitalized on it with his style and "free-market nationalist" message, solidifying and reinforcing the trend, but without the civil rights movement and the resulting 30 year political cataclysm he'd probably never have gotten elected Governor, much less President. I find it a little disturbing that Obama apparently thinks Reagan got elected on the power of his pure awesomeness, or because people wanted to be entrepreneurs more, or whatever the hell he was apparently trying to get across. It'd be like thinking FDR was all about his message style - FDR's message once elected, along the same lines, turned into this unifying vision of a better America, etc., and all that. What really got FDR elected and put such fertile soil down for what he did, however, was the Great Depression destroying the free market, laissez faire consensus of the 1920s. He then, like Reagan, did a masterful job of capitalizing on it, but it'd really miss the point to say the story of FDR's appeal was is sunny optimism.

Jeffd, what is your theory for why he got elected, then, if it's not what Obama said? What's the data for it?

Maybe this is analogize to the "Great Man" vs. not theories of history. You can guess which I subscribe to.

Phil_Stein

01-22-2008, 01:18 PM

Err, I'm a little confused...

The Southern trend towards the GOP (mainly because of racism) chiefly accounted for the blowout victory of Reagan in '80 and '84, when he won 44 and 49 states, respectively?

I'll have to check a map, I thought the South was a bit smaller than that...

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 01:21 PM

As pointed out down thread, the crackup of the Democratic coalition wasn't limited to the South.

Lum

01-22-2008, 01:22 PM

That would be why you keep blaming racist southerners for Republican victories?

I mean, come on, surely you see how objectionable that is, even if you keep padding it with "Well, that was *a* factor".

Trust me - racism is FAR worse north of the Mason-Dixon line. And unless you're going to argue every state in the Union in 1984 save Minnesota was composed of Jesse Helms clones, it's a pretty grim fallacy.

The Red/Blue state divide is a better way of describing the post-LBJ alignment - rural conservatives vs. urban liberals.

Anaxagoras

01-22-2008, 01:23 PM

I'm arguing that Reagan chiefly got elected by his margins, and got his agenda through, because the South was trending Republican, and the chief reason for that was racism.
No, Jason... you've made that very, very clear. But apparently we haven't been. Your narrative overstates the racism, overstates the trends, and understates Reagan's ability to tap into a fundamantal discontent & run with it. You say that "if such-and-such had not been the case". Well, those conditions were the case. Much more importantly was the ability of Reagan to completely destroy the political opposition. Not so much by destroying them through outright attacks (The Clinton/Bush method) but rather by... well... whatever the hell Reagan did. I don't fully understand it. Make people happy, I guess?

It'd be like thinking FDR was all about his message style - FDR's message once elected turnied into this unifying vision of a better America, etc., and all that, but what really got FDR elected and put such fertile soil down for what he did was the great depression destroying the free market, laissez faire consensus of the 1920s. He then, like Reagan, did a masterful job of capitalizing on it, but it'd really miss the point to say the story of FDR's appeal was all about his sunny optimism.
That doesn't miss the point at all. The conditions were what they were... but FDR's brilliance was to do something with those conditions. It's entirely possible for opportunities to be missed. I mean... does that even need saying? All you have to do is look at the endemic suffering & poverty of much of Central & South America, and you can see that conditions can be awful... and no one seizes the opportunity. Or they try to seize it, and fail.

Jason, your over-adherence to tables & polls & numbers misses the point that people don't behave scientifically. Numbers don't describe people. Such tools can be helpful to understanding certain aspects of human behaviour, but you will always miss the human condition if you rely on numbers. And politics is all about the human condition.

BlueJackalope

01-22-2008, 01:25 PM

I'm arguing that Reagan chiefly got elected by his margins because the South was trending Republican, and the chief reason for that was racism. I suppose a terrible GOP politician or masterful Democratic politican could have shunted off that realignment, but the trendline was pretty clear starting with Nixon. There's tons of data out there about how the Democratic coalition splitting was rooted in racial issues; it's non-controversial.

Reagan got elected because he presented himself as the "can-do" "Morning in America" guy compared to Carter's message of malise.

Carter was elected because of Nixon, Reagan got elected because Carter was perceived as weak (hostage crisis) and ineffectual. I assume Ron carried more than just southern states. He certainly did when he was re-elected. Along the way he cemented the south as Republican and made being a Republican "cool" (to the baby boomer's children anyway) and somehow "blue collar". Clinton won due to Bush I's economic woes. He was re-elected because the economy was good, but he didn't move the country Democratic.

The next president should be a Democrat due to W's monumental failures, I'd like it to be one that can actually move the county back towards the center and form consensus.

Phil_Stein

01-22-2008, 01:29 PM

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 01:37 PM

If Reagan was basically just coasting on a pro-GOP trend, then how come in 1980, Reagan won 44 states and beat Carter by ~9.74% in the popular vote (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?f=0&year=1980), but the Democrats took 242 of 435 house seats, and beat the Republicans by ~2.6% in popular votes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_elections%2C_1980) for the House? If my math is correct, Reagan's results outperformed those of Republican House candidates by about 12% - a very big margin.

In 1984, Reagan took 49 states, and won the popular vote (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1984&off=0&elect=0&f=0) by over 18%, while Democrats actually did better in the House than they had done 4 years earlier (253 seats and a +5.1% margin in the popular vote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections%2 C_1984)).

Did I say he was just coasting?

People voting for Democratic congressional candidates and Republican presidential candidates didn't start with Reagan; it largely started with Nixon. The 1972 Nixon blowout had the same gap in Presidential and Congressional vote totals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_elections%2C_1972) - Democrats in the house won the popular vote by 5%, lost 6 seats, and Nixon won by 23 points (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?f=0&year=1972).

From what I've read party loyalty is a lot more malleable at the Presidential level than Congressional, and there's also various issues like incumbency that make Congressional shifts lag public opinon. Those Wallace and Nixon voters in the South re-elected tons of Democratic congress critters; it took a long time for the local party loyalty to die off and the incumbents to retire.

BlueJackalope

01-22-2008, 01:56 PM

I'm sorry, I'm a bit lost. What are you arguing Jason?

Are you taking the Clinton tack that Obama mentioning Reagan without spitting on the ground twixt his index and middle fingers makes him a self-hating Republican apologist?

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 02:02 PM

Phil_Stein

01-22-2008, 02:08 PM

Did I say he was just coasting?
That's certainly what the following quote implies to me.

I'm arguing that Reagan chiefly got elected by his margins, and got his agenda through, because the South was trending Republican, and the chief reason for that was racism. I suppose a terrible GOP politician or masterful Democratic politican might have shunted off that realignment, but I don't have the slighest idea how, and the trendline was pretty clear starting with Nixon.

Also, you keep pointing to Reagan's success as being "chiefly" because of the South, and you keep ignoring the fact that Reagan achieved a blowout win nationally - New York, California, etc.

Also, if the overall trend towards the GOP was muted because of lag effects (it takes a while for people to switch their allegiance at the House level and/or for House members to retire), then why did the Democrats do BETTER in the House in '84 than in '80, measured by both popular vote percentage and seats won (and in spite of the fact that Reagan won by a larger margin in '84 than in '80)?

jeffd

01-22-2008, 02:54 PM

Jeffd, what is your theory for why he got elected, then, if it's not what Obama said? What's the data for it?

Why ask a question I've already answered?

Reagan's success in pushing a conservative agenda was in no small part due to his ability to assemble a coalition that not only included traditional conservatives, but also independents and Democrats. If Democrats want to be similarly successful in pushing a progressive agenda in 2009 and beyond, they should seek to exploit the mood of the country in their rhetoric and tactics to build a similarly broad coalition.

Christ, now that I type it out I can't believe that this is at all controversial for you.

BlueJackalope

01-22-2008, 03:16 PM

No. I think Hillary's kind of blowing it with that line. She should be using my theory. :)

Namely, that Obama's thinking Reagan melted away the opposition with a unifying message of bipartisan optimism - clearly modelling himself along the same lines - exhibits why he's going to get his ass handed to him by the GOP once elected.

There's also apparently the disagreement in this thread about long term trends vs. the individual impact of politicians - or maybe it's events and policy vs. style & unifying vision - but that's probably not campaign ad fodder.

So Hillary is your choice because she has no message of hope and her unpleasant, didactic, angry, self-entitlement will carry the day?

Maybe I'm but a naive babe, but I think W has plowed and disc-harrowed the political landscape and made it fertile for fresh new progressive seed. I'd like to see someone in office who isn't thinking about how to salt half the field.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 03:58 PM

So Hillary is your choice?

No. It's Edwards at the moment, barely, followed by Hillary. Obama can have my vote if he convinces me he has the ability to actually fight. There's also the detail that if someone talks like a Republican I don't exactly trust them.

Also, you keep pointing to Reagan's success as being "chiefly" because of the South, and you keep ignoring the fact that Reagan achieved a blowout win nationally - New York, California, etc.

You've got to seperate the specifics of individual elections from the long term trends. LBJ ran up enormous margins everywhere in 1964, but it was just a short term abberation. The big story of the 1980 election wasn't Reagan winning everywhere; the incumbent Carter was obviously going to lose. The big story was Reagan winning the election while nailing down the previously Solid South, and then making that permanent over his administration, for the GOP. A Republican winning by Reagan's margins in the other various states wouldn't have sounded completely impossible to a time traveler from 1956; Ike (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1952&off=0) pulled it off, for one - NY by 12 and CA by 16 over Adlai in 1952, slightly extending the margins in 1956. Him winning the entire South would, and it going GOP ever after, would. The reason he could get so much stuff through Congress is that moderate democrats were terrified they'd lose their seats if they opposed him; and the source of that power was his southern appeal scaring Southern Democrats - better vote with Reagan, don't want to lose your seat; finding allies in Southern Democrats who'd practically switched parties already; and his inroads in blue collar votes outside the South, on less extreme versions of the same appeal. IMHO the biggest issue driving his appeal was an electorate pissed off about race, followed by the grab bag of inflation, taxes, and the cold war.

Also, if the overall trend towards the GOP was muted because of lag effects (it takes a while for people to switch their allegiance at the House level and/or for House members to retire), then why did the Democrats do BETTER in the House in '84 than in '80, measured by both popular vote percentage and seats won (and in spite of the fact that Reagan won by a larger margin in '84 than in '80)?

Straight line, blazingly obvious trends are rare? It's not some personal theory of mine, it's a pretty common theory. See here (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=f0S&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=the+rise+of+southern+republicans&spell=1). The same thing is going on in New England in reverse, for what it's worth.

Page 205 (http://books.google.com/books?id=XQeYu-GxlKwC&pg=PA205&vq=lag&dq=southern+republican+reagan+congress+lag&sig=_ux2pG6O7gAVbXl_Rkrn29-n95w) discusses the process of party id switching some.

Reagan's success in pushing a conservative agenda was in no small part due to his ability to assemble a coalition that not only included traditional conservatives, but also independents and Democrats.

Ok, what was his trick in your opinon to assembling that coalition, if not Obama's theory of sunny optimism and let's-make-money?

BlueJackalope

01-22-2008, 05:38 PM

I can't for the life of me figure out what in the candy colored raspberry flavored hell you are talking about. You can whine all day about the reasons Reagan was sucessful, the point is that he was, and the country changed. He did present an optimistic, can do message and was able to graft that on to even the regressive and ugly portions of the Republicanism. The democrats are presented with an opportunity to put out their own policies and message in the form of a dynamic and exciting candidate and move the country back to sanity, but I fear monovalent democratic appparatchik navel gazers (no offense) like yourself will queer the deal. Again, no offense but pull your head out of your ass.

There is no major difference - policy wise - between the three major candidates (please don't try to argue this because it is splitting hairs and I am bald). So what you are left with is which one of them can win in November and govern effectively after that. Edwards is cooked, he had his chance to prove he was a tough fighter and he curled up into a well coiffed ball and let Cheney scratch him behind the ears. Plus, he isn't winning the nomination. No way, no how.

Hillary is at best a return to Bill Clinton's administration, complete with the division and general skeeviness. Plus as an aside I don't like the idea that America has become a dynastic nation. She might be a decent caretaker and repair some of the damage W has wrought, but, at this point, anybody could do that. The danger is that she can re-energize and re-unite the broken GOP, hell I think she might lose to either McCain or even Romney.

I believe its time to see what some new blood can do. If Obama can excite disaffected, young, and minority voters he can form a broadbased colition that could work its will on what is bound to be a democratic congress. He might only have the soaring speeches and the urbane charm. He might have an empty head and feet of clay, but I doubt it, and furthermore, I'm fully prepared to have him break my heart, just like Bill Clinton did but what the hell I figure we owe ourselves the chance to find out.

Andrew Mayer

01-22-2008, 05:47 PM

Hillary is at best a return to Bill Clinton's administration, complete with the division and general skeeviness. Plus as an aside I don't like the idea that America has become a dynastic nation. She might be a decent caretaker and repair some of the damage W has wrought, but, at this point, anybody could do that. The danger is that she can re-energize and re-unite the broken GOP, hell I think she might lose to either McCain or even Romney.

I get the idea behind this, but I'm wondering if sixteen years of Hillary hate hasn't kind of burned out the usefulness of this too beyond the already convinced.

I'm starting to think that the constant attacks have made her somewhat immune the Right Wing attack machine.

If anything, the fact that when the electorate sees her she isn't actually the slavering baby-eating monster that she's been painted to be all these years is probably helping her.

Gav

01-22-2008, 06:08 PM

No. It's Edwards at the moment, barely, followed by Hillary. Obama can have my vote if he convinces me he has the ability to actually fight. There's also the detail that if someone talks like a Republican I don't exactly trust them.

If you're so much against the great man theory, why should it matter? Every Democrat should be more or less the same as every other, depending on how the national trends look.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 06:10 PM

If you're so much against the great man theory, why should it matter? Every Democrat should be more or less the same as every other, depending on how the national trends look.

Sure, but that doesn't stop me from obsessing about it like everyone else. :)

Again, no offense but pull your head out of your ass.

You're the loyal Democrat who's interested in Bloomberg running, right?

I agree, as you point out, that the candidates have virtually identical platforms. So we're reduced to really whipped-up overblown tea-leaf reading about who will be the most convincing candidate, or who will handle the GOP attack machine the best, or whatever. If Obama gets elected and actually delivers, great, I'll take a bullet for 'em. I'm just not so sanguine about him, and the board loathes Hillary so much that I end up getting drawn into arguments favoring her far more than I really should.

BlueJackalope

01-22-2008, 06:16 PM

I get the idea behind this, but I'm wondering if sixteen years of Hillary hate hasn't kind of burned out the usefulness of this too beyond the already convinced.

I'm starting to think that the constant attacks have made her somewhat immune the Right Wing attack machine.

If anything, the fact that when the electorate sees her she isn't actually the slavering baby-eating monster that she's been painted to be all these years is probably helping her.

Oh I think she can win...probably, the GOP is horribly broken. But I cant see her as a safer candidate than Obama and I think even if she wins, its just going to be 4-8 years of ugly gridlock.

Gloria Borger or somesuch noted that the Clintons bring two sets of brass knuckles to every fight when they only need one. They are, in some ways, as damaged as some of the attack dogs. Their first instinct is to lash out and that makes enemies. At this point I don't see how she goes about building a coalition. I don't see how she moves the south or even blue collar men. A message of aggrieved victimhood might get her the White House, but its a terrible place to try and govern from.

BlueJackalope

01-22-2008, 06:25 PM

You're the loyal Democrat who's interested in Bloomberg running, right?

Nah, I'm not a loyal Democrat. I voted for Clinton once, then Nader, then Nader (protest votes - I know Ralph is an ass-hat, plus due to the fact I live in a blue state, they were "wasted" votes, thank you electoral college), then Kerry. But I do vote Democratic in most cases.

I'm interested in whomever will move the country in the right direction. Hell yeah I'm interested in Bloomberg*, if it appears that he can cut the gordian knot so to speak. But only if the other choices are Hillary and someone other than McCain.

*Note: I don't know anything about him, other than he's very very, very very very very very wealthy. He might be crazy on a Ross Perot level.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 06:33 PM

Nah, I'm not a loyal Democrat. I voted for Clinton once, then Nader, then Nader (protest votes - I know Ralph is an ass-hat, plus due to the fact I live in a blue state, they were "wasted" votes, thank you electoral college), then Kerry. But I do vote Democratic in most cases.

I'm interested in whomever will move the country in the right direction. Hell yeah I'm interested in Bloomberg, if it appears that he can cut the gordian knot so to speak. But only if the other choices are Hillary and someone other than McCain.

What gordian knot can be cut by Obama, McCain, and Bloomberg, in that order? I can't think of many issues they have in common - campaign finance reform?

BlueJackalope

01-22-2008, 07:17 PM

What gordian knot can be cut by Obama, McCain, and Bloomberg, in that order? I can't think of many issues they have in common - campaign finance reform?

I think partisian politics in particular, have become very harmful to America. W never would have been able to do so much harm if the GOP hadn't been in lock step behind him, not because they believed it was the right thing to do, but because it was how they kept power.

Obama can change that by being popular enough and drawing enough independent, dissaffected Republican, young, and minority voters to establsh a lasting Democratic majority (like - y'know Reagan but in reverse). Enough of a majority that good government (which I generally belive the Democrats are the party of) can't be blocked by a partisian minority.

McCain can change it by changing the GOP away from its bible totin, immigrant hatin, racist, money grubbin, war mongerin, science ignorin...ect; ugly aspects and back to the small gubmint, wise economic party it pretends to be. I know Big John has lost a few steps and has sold his soul for pennies on the dollar, but I'm hoping there is enough of the 2000 McCain left in there to do some good. He's still Mr. Smith compared to everyone else running for the GOP.

Bloomberg...'cause, like, third party man.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 07:56 PM

I think partisian politics in particular, have become very harmful to America.

Ah, ok. I think you're completely wrong, but there you go.

BlueJackalope

01-22-2008, 08:02 PM

Ah, ok. I think you're completely wrong, but there you go.

Why Edwards? Why then Hillary? Why not Obama?

Educate, brother.

Jason McCullough

01-22-2008, 08:29 PM

He agrees with me on everything, that's why. :)

Issue wise, his platform is about as liberal as can be hoped for; slightly more so than the other candidates, for what it's worth. I agree with his coherent vision of what went wrong, and how to fix it - the union movement disintegrated; need to rebuild it. The super rich and huge corporations have been pilling up outsized influence; we need it either cut down their influence or increase everyone else's.

Tactically, he's driven the other candidates significantly to the left, and he seems to get it about how it's going to be a big fight to fix things. The insurance company-owned Republicans aren't going to let us fix the health care system if we ask nicely. They're going to call any Democratic candidate a terrorist. They stole it in 2000. You can't win by playing nice; you win by forcefully going for it and scaring the shit out of your opposition.

Personally, he so clearly believes in what he's saying, and started that direction before it was trendy, that I have no doubt at all he's an honest-to-god liberal. So I'm not too worried about him doing something other than his platform when he gets into office. Along those same lines, unlike Hillary he's actually coughed it up and said he was flat-out wrong on Iraq. No hedging, no fucking around. He gets it. It would be a little exasperating to have yet another Southerner running things, but oh well.

If I thought Obama could take a punch and throw as good as he gets, and wasn't possibly a centrist in liberal's clothing, I'd be for Obama. Hillary and him have virtually identical plans for Iraq now, so him refusing to do what he was implying earlier last year - take the position that we should get out now - has eliminated what advantage he has there.

He can still convince me, and probably the easiest way to do that is 1) destroy Hillary - the GOP is going to make her attacks look like a warm-up and 2) convince me his conservative talking doesn't mean he's secretly a centrist. Seriously, even bringing up about Reagan in a Democratic primary? Yeah, that'll make Democrats think you're really liberal.

The only reason I even consider voting for that that goddamn centrist Hillary is by process of elimination - Edwards isn't viable, I suspect Obama won't be able to get an agenda through, so there you go. She may not be all that liberal, but she's good at it and I know exactly what I'll get.

Elton

01-23-2008, 03:32 AM

Point taken about Obama and whether or not he'll have the ball-busting stubbornness needed to be an effective president. I admit I'm kind of jazzed by his post-partisan rhetoric, but I too wonder if he has the same cojones as (for example) Bill Clinton did in 1995, sticking to his guns through two federal shutdowns that could have blown up in his face.

But I don't remember any indication in 1992 that Clinton would show that kind of fortitude -- his obvious personal qualities were that he was smart as hell; a great, emotive speaker; and undisciplined in numerous ways (not just sexually -- he was always running late). Obama 2008 is equivalent in my mind to Clinton 1992, minus the executive experience and sex scandals.

But yeah, while Obama's fortitude hasn't been tested on a federal scale, I agree it's safe to assume that Hillary Clinton would not be afraid to stare down a Republican majority in Congress. Since they're so similar on the issues, I admit my strong preference for Obama is based on personality more than anything else. I know it's not entirely defensible, but I am naturally and strongly drawn towards a basketball-playing Wire-watching (http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/01/obama_on_the_wire) candidate from Chicago.

Gordon Cameron

01-23-2008, 03:40 AM

Obama went to my high school so I have to root for him.

Abiding Dude

01-23-2008, 04:44 AM

In 2004 I was all ABB. After the last couple of weeks I'm now like all ABC.

Anti-Bunny

01-23-2008, 08:21 AM

I was curious about this particular snap at Obama (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/22/AR2008012203452.html), regarding Obama's supposed previous occupation as a 'slumlord' or whatever, and figured it was worth posting...

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama received $168,000 in campaign contributions from Rezko and his associates after 1995. Obama has denied doing any legal work directly for Rezko or his companies. During Monday night's debate, he said that he had done "about five hours' worth of work" on a joint real estate development project involving Rezko and a Chicago church group.

William Miceli, Obama's supervisor at the law firm, said the firm represented the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., a nonprofit group that redeveloped a run-down property on Chicago's South Side with Rezko. He called Clinton's assertion that Obama represented Rezko in a slum landlord business "categorically untrue."

"He was a very junior lawyer at the time, who was given responsibility for basic due diligence, document review," said Miceli, adding that Obama did what he was told by the firm. According to Miceli, that was the only time Obama worked on a Rezko-related project while at the law firm.

JeffL

01-23-2008, 09:55 AM

Yep. The media in Illinois (mainly Chicago) had already dug into this quite some time ago, and their information was availble for anyone who actually cared about the truth.

This is one of the reasons I really don't want the Clintons back in - their style is pure attack, dig up anything that can be stated as dirt, mud slinging. Yeah, I know, that's politics. But Bill and Hill are just flat out lying about a lot of things recently.

Tankero

01-23-2008, 10:03 AM

Smells like a cannibalistic approach. It's not even "I'll do whatever it takes to win", it's "I'll do whatever it takes to bring you down!"

BlueJackalope

01-23-2008, 11:38 AM

TNR asks if Hillary can get Obama's supporters in the general -

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/01/22/what-happens-to-obama-s-supporters-if-he-loses.aspx

He doesn't think so

BRODY: Will Hillary be a drag for down-ticket races as a presidential candidate?

OBAMA: I think there is no doubt that she has higher negatives than any of the remaining democratic candidates. That's just a fact and there are some who will not vote for her.

Jason McCullough

01-24-2008, 05:25 PM

Elaborating on the war issue, here's a good article explaining how Obama's squandered a lot of his anti-war (http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=how_to_talk_foreign_policy) cred.

And if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama hopes to prevail, they're going to have to come up with something better than what was on display during their brief foreign-policy tussle during Monday night's debate. Hillary Clinton, attempting to drive the knife into Obama's back, warned that if John McCain is the Republican nominee, "we know that once again we will have a general election about national security. That is what will happen. I believe of any one of us, I am better positioned and better able to take on John McCain or any Republican when it comes to issues about protecting and defending our country and promoting our interest in the world."

This was a Clinton debacle in the making; a pitch tailor-made for Barack Obama to slam out of the park by quipping, "I don't think the way to beat Republicans on national security is by supporting their catastrophic invasions."

Instead, John Edwards talked for a while about lobbyists, and then Obama weakly returned the conversation to Clinton's comment, saying, "I believe that the way we are going to take on somebody like a John McCain on national security is not that we're sort of -- we've been sort of like John McCain, but not completely, you know, we voted for the war, but we had reservations." Then, figuring this wasn't abstract enough, he went meta: "I think it's going to be somebody who can serve as a strong contrast and say, 'we've got to overcome the politics of fear in this country.'"

I'm sympathetic to what I think Obama was trying to say, but the point is better put more simply -- to have the best shot at winning national security arguments with John McCain, the Democrats need a candidate who didn't support the invasion of Iraq. After all, McCain won't be tarred with the specific acts of "incompetence" that are frequently (and misleadingly) alleged to have been responsible for disaster in Iraq. The Democratic nominee is going to have to argue that there is a fundamental strategic difference in their approach and that of the Republican nominee.

Maybe he's toned down the anti-war thing because it's a "dividing" issue; I dunno.

BlueJackalope

01-24-2008, 07:52 PM

Elaborating on the war issue, here's a good article explaining how Obama's squandered a lot of his anti-war (http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=how_to_talk_foreign_policy) cred.

Maybe he's toned down the anti-war thing because it's a "dividing" issue; I dunno.

Damn man, did you even read the article? Allow me to show how that quote was actually written

I'm sympathetic to what I think Obama was trying to say, but the point is better put more simply -- to have the best shot at winning national security arguments with John McCain, the Democrats need a candidate who didn't support the invasion of Iraq.

See those italics? The writer is emphasing what he feels should be Obama's argument. It is an arugment that Hillary (and to a lesser extent Edwards) Can't make!
(see how that works?)

The writer just wants Obama to debate differently, but its hardly an endorsement of Hillary.

Instead, Obama offered "the politics of fear." And, worse, we got a continuation of front-runner Hillary Clinton's politics of militarism. Throughout the campaign, there's been little consideration of the lessons future politicians will take if they see that having backed a Republican president in launching a war of choice that proved the most catastrophic foreign-policy mistake of the past 25 years didn't even cost Clinton the Democratic Party's nomination. Are the next crop of senators and representatives asked to endorse a preventive war on flimsy evidence going to think twice, or are they going to do what John Kerry and John Edwards did in 2002 and listen to political consultants who remind them that blind support for military adventures is crucial to one's presidential ambitions?

Jason McCullough

01-24-2008, 08:18 PM

BlueJackalope

01-25-2008, 08:58 AM

Uh, I didn't mean it was an endorsement of Hillary Obama is doing a terrible job arguing about the Iraq war, for unknown reasons. As a result, he's lost most of his advantage on the Iraq war vs. Hillary.

Myself, I figure if he's toning down the Iraq commentary there's a reason, and I probably won't like it. Could just be a tactical misstep, though.

But you prefer Hillary and Edwards to Obama correct? Even though he is the only one still running who was vocally opposed to the war when Senators Clinton and Edwards were voting to approve it. Maybe he would have cravenly caved too, if he had been a senator, but the fact is he doesn't have to defend that vote.

In Other News-

Did you catch the GOP debate last night? It was all Hillary all the time.
She is the one candidate that will re-unite and re-energize the GOP.
Which is ironic, 'cause she is doing her best to divide the Democratic Party.

BlueJackalope

01-25-2008, 09:58 AM

From an E.J. Dionne piece in TNR -

Actually, its not very long I'm going to post the whole thing - (and take the liberty to highlight, for me, the money paragraph)

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=7987126a-7ff9-41c0-a6d0-9f0e44ffbc8c

Echo Chamber
Bill Clinton used to sound a lot like Barack Obama, which makes his recent outbursts all the more disheartening.
E.J. Dionne Jr., The New Republic Published: Thursday, January 24, 2008

WASHINGTON--It was a remarkable moment: A young, free-thinking presidential hopeful named Bill Clinton sat down with reporters and editors at The Washington Post in October 1991 and started saying things most Democrats wouldn't allow to pass their lips.

Ronald Reagan, Clinton said, deserved credit for winning the Cold War. He praised Reagan's "rhetoric in defense of freedom" and his role in "advancing the idea that communism could be rolled back."

"The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing," Clinton declared.

Clinton was careful to add that the Reagan military program included "a lot of wasted money and unnecessary expenditure," but the signal had been sent: Clinton was willing to move beyond "the brain-dead politics in both parties," as he so often put it.

His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton two days later for daring to "set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan." Clinton's "readiness to defy his party's prevailing Reaganphobia and admit it," the paper wrote, "is one reason he's a candidate to watch."

I have been thinking about that episode ever since Hillary Clinton's campaign started unloading on Barack Obama for making statements about Reagan that were, if anything, more measured than Bill Clinton's 1991 comments. Obama simply acknowledged Reagan's long-term impact on politics, and the fact that conservatives once constituted the camp producing new ideas, flawed though they were.

Obama's not particularly original insight was a central premise of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Clinton argued over and over that Democrats could not win without new ideas of their own. To reread Clinton's "New Covenant" speeches from back then is to be reminded of how electrifying it was to hear a politician who was willing to break new ground.

That's why the Clintons' assault on Obama is so depressing. In many ways, Obama is running the 2008 version of the 1992 Clinton campaign. You have the feeling that if Bill Clinton did not have another candidate in this contest, he'd be advising Obama and cheering him on.

Let's grant the Clintons their claims: The press is tougher on Hillary Clinton than it is on Barack Obama; the old, irrational Clinton hatred is alive and well in certain parts of the media; Hillary Clinton gets hit harder when she criticizes Obama than Obama does when he goes after her.

Let's further stipulate that Obama's formulation--he said Reagan "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not"--was guaranteed to enrage the former president. In Democratic circles, associating someone with Nixon is akin to a Roman comparing an emperor with Caligula.

None of it justifies the counterproductive behavior. Does anyone doubt that if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, she will need the votes of the young people and African-Americans who have rallied to Obama--and that what she's doing now will make it harder to energize them? Doesn't calling in Bill Clinton as the lead attacker merely underscore Obama's central theme, that it's time to "turn the page" on our Bush-Clinton-Bush political past?

And with both Clintons on record saying kind things about Reagan, why go after Obama on the point? Honestly: If Obama is a Reaganite, then I am a salamander.

Yet there was Hillary Clinton's campaign, unveiling a radio ad on Wednesday implying that Obama bought into such ideas as "refusing to raise the minimum wage." Come on, guys.

The worst thing about all this is what both Clintons are doing to their own legacy as pioneers of an approach that rejected, as Bill Clinton said in a 1991 speech, "the stale orthodoxies of left and right." The great asset shared by both Clintons is their willingness to bring fresh thinking to old problems.

"Our new choice plainly rejects the old categories and false alternatives they impose," Bill Clinton added in that 1991 address in which he offered a long list of new ideas. "Is what I just said to you liberal or conservative? The truth is, it is both, and it is different. It rejects the Republicans' attacks and the Democrats' previous unwillingness to consider new alternatives."

Pretty good stuff, still. Why should either Clinton attack Obama for facing some of the same truths that both of them taught their party so long ago?