The Democratic convention

[Rollory]

So apparently this - direct from the Obama and Clinton offices - is the plan for how the convention is going to be run:

Since June, Senators Obama and Clinton have been working together to ensure a Democratic victory this November. They are both committed to winning back the White House and to to ensuring that the voices of all 35 million people who participated in this historic primary election are respected and heard in Denver. To honor and celebrate these voices and votes, both Senator Obama's and Senator Clinton's names will be placed in nomination.

“I am convinced that honoring Senator Clinton's historic campaign in this way will help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong united fashion,” said Senator Barack Obama.

Senator Obama’s campaign encouraged Senator Clinton's name to be placed in nomination as a show of unity and in recognition of the historic race she ran and the fact that she was the first woman to compete in all of our nation’s primary contests.

“With every voice heard and the Party strongly united, we will elect Senator Obama President of the United States and put our nation on the path to peace and prosperity once again,” said Senator Hillary Clinton.

Senator Obama and Senator Clinton are looking forward to a convention unified behind Barack Obama as the Party’s nominee and to victory this fall for America.

Now, I'm an evil racist whitey conservative jerkface, but I look at that and I can't help but wonder if Obama is being played for a fool.

"Oh my dearie me, darlings, I certainly didn't expect a MAJORITY of you to vote for li'l ol' ME!" <witch laughter>

[Matthew Gallant]

Now, I'm an evil racist whitey conservative jerkface,
Your astute self-evaluation is in stark contrast to your punditic evaluation of the Democrats. Who exactly do you think is going to switch over to Ol' Emptypockets after two months of Obama turning the endless stream of Republican negativism into a six-point lead in the polls?

[Dave Markell]

Punditic?

[Matthew Gallant]

The adjectival form of pundit.

[Dave Markell]

Yes, I know what you meant to say by it, I've just never heard an adjectival use of it before. But, I just hit up Websters, and it's legit. Yay vocabulary growth!

[Matthew Gallant]

I like it because it sounds vaguely like a disease.

[Andrew Mayer]

The body politic has had a terrible case of punditis for many years.

[Lh'owon]

Why do you hate black people Rollory?

[NowhereDan]

The Democrats DO have a proud history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and the only way they could possibly manage that this time around is to overturn the will of the voters and nominate the losing candidate at the convention.

[Anders Hallin]

Now, I'm an evil racist whitey conservative jerkface, but I look at that and I can't help but wonder if Obama is being played for a fool.

"Oh my dearie me, darlings, I certainly didn't expect a MAJORITY of you to vote for li'l ol' ME!" <witch laughter>
Oh, now I see how the hatred of Hillary Clinton isn't irrational at all.

[AndrewM]

What is the standard protocol at conventions for the losing candidates?

[bago]

There's a vote, and they lose.

[BennyProfane]

There's a vote, and they lose.

And then everyone laugh's and points at them. And they make them ride around the auditorium in a wheelbarrow being pushed by the winner.

[extarbags]

There's no real risk of that happening, but this is still retarded. I'm not sure the path to the Democrats becoming stronger as a party is to babysit the feelings of some vicious cunt who views the Presidency as her birthright for some inexplicable reason and can't bear the thought of not attaining it.

[noun]

Graphic, but I concur. It appears that while Hillary's weakness is her inability to execute a plan or control a budget, Obama's is to be magnanimous to the point of stupidity. Even if he wins, he's going to come out weaker, not stronger.

[Stroker Ace]

Better that they should publicly flog her as an appeal to the Hillary haters who might otherwise vote for McCain!

[AaronSofaer]

I don't think that, properly handled, this can only end badly.

I think that if Obama can get Clinton actually working to get him elected, then that would be huge, especially in terms of media influence.

The question is whether Clinton will be a good enough sport to actually do so. The example of Lincoln comes to mind, where all of his major challengers for the nomination... became his cabinet.

[arctangent]

The question is whether Clinton will be a good enough sport to actually do so. The example of Lincoln comes to mind, where all of his major challengers for the nomination... became his cabinet.

And then they had him killed?

[Marged]

I think the convention is gonna be great - a masterstroke of stagecraft. This Clinton thing doesn't bother me at all. I love that the Dems have lined up four nights of prime time convention hoopla and the Republicans are holding their convention... on Labor Day weekend. "Hey everybody, let's try to pretend we aren't even having a convention!" Norm Coleman said he wouldn't bother to show up if it wasn't going to be held in St. Paul. I love it.

[AaronSofaer]

And then they had him killed?

Lincoln's cabinet had him killed? News to me...

[BlueJackalope]

I don't think that, properly handled, this can only end badly.

I think that if Obama can get Clinton actually working to get him elected, then that would be huge, especially in terms of media influence.

The question is whether Clinton will be a good enough sport to actually do so. The example of Lincoln comes to mind, where all of his major challengers for the nomination... became his cabinet.

From what I hear Hillary has, from most appearances, been towing the line and appearing to campaign for Obama.

She and Bill are probably privately convinced that Obama can't win but know they can't be seen as the fulcrum that McCain uses to pry victory away from him. I have no doubt her speech will be pro-Obama and boring. Bill's speech, on the other hand, is likely to be self-referential first, effusive about Hillary second, and contain some faint praise for Obama. It will also, in typical Bill Clinton fashion, be too wordy without saying anything and ultimately boring*. I don't think they can do a ton of harm, unless they display the same sort of tone deafness that they showed during the primaries.

I'm hoping Obama blows them away in comparison.


*Who was that old guy who ranked him out after his 2nd Inauguration speech. Loved that guy.

[Jason McCullough]

I think it's hilarious you think Clinton's speech will only contain faint praise for Obama and mostly be about him and his wife when Obama controls every single thing that happens at the convention. You know they sign off on every speech before its given, right? These things are staged like a movie.

[BlueJackalope]

I think it's hilarious you think Clinton's speech will only contain faint praise for Obama and mostly be about him and his wife when Obama controls every single thing that happens at the convention. You know they sign off on every speech before its given, right? These things are staged like a movie.

I'm glad I could get you to chuckle Jason. Bill is the 500lb gorilla. His own wife's campaign couldn't control him (you can only hope to contain him). Obama's people aren't going to write the former President's speech for him.

I saw several of Bill's speeches on nights where Hillary lost primaries (She spoke on nights she won) and they followed that pattern, almost always about himself. He would talk about all the great things he's done, and is doing (though his foundation) and if he's soo awesome and he supports his wife, so should you.

I don't think either of them will actively sandbag him, (I am saying Bill is capable) and ultimately the hint of drama will probably have more people tuning into the convention than normally would. So its probably a net good.

[Jason McCullough]

You Clinton haters never stop amazing me.

[BlueJackalope]

You Clinton haters never stop amazing me.

Oh for fuck sake, read my post Jason. Tell me what you disagree with.

[Jason McCullough]

Obama controls the convention, the DNC, and the Democratic party in general. They're not going to approve a speech by Bill that contains a single word they don't like. The only way he could possibly do what you say is to give a different speech than his prepared, approved remarks.

Throughout the entire primary you guys were using "Clinton logic" just like the 1990s, where every step by them is part of their devious plan, and getting proved wrong over and over (They'll do a credentials challenge! really they will!) has no effect on this. It's just as exasperating when Andrew Sullivan does it.

[StGabe]

They're not going to approve a speech by Bill that contains a single word they don't like.

They're also not going to deny Clinton his moment at the podium which means that they're going to have to let a speech of his through the vetting process at some point, whether they like it or not. It doesn't seem likely that Clinton is going to allow much revision when it'd look really bad for them to pull his speech at this point.

I don't hate Clinton. I think he was the most competent president we've had in a long time (even if I didn't always agree with him). I do think you've got cotton in your ears if you haven't noticed that he's gotten a bit egocentric recently (or possibly he was always that way and merely isn't doing as good a job of self-editing).

[BlueJackalope]

Obama controls the convention, the DNC, and the Democratic party in general. They're not going to approve a speech by Bill that contains a single word they don't like. The only way he could possibly do what you say is to give a different speech than his prepared, approved remarks.

I hope you are right, I think I've mentioned that I suspect both of them will be on their best behavior, so if Obama loses they won't be seen as the cause if nothing else. You can't be pretending that they are superhappy Obama won, or that they would see him losing as an opportunity do you?

Throughout the entire primary you guys were using "Clinton logic" just like the 1990s, where every step by them is part of their devious plan, and getting proved wrong over and over (They'll do a credentials challenge! really they will!) has no effect on this. It's just as exasperating when Andrew Sullivan does it.

Throughout the primaries I maintained that Hillary would be a terrible candidate, based on her actions as 1st Lady and in the Senate (at this point I'd like to inject a huge "nya nya nya I told you so"). I have no confidence that she would have been a successful president for the same reasons.

[Jon Rowe]

This thread is lacking an awesome title.

Like

Run!!! DNC (Democratic National Convention)

[JeffL]

I don't think Bill Clinton is going to give Obama's camp the control over his speech you assume, Jason. If Obama was in complete control and had everything the way he and his supporters wanted there's no way there would be a big show with Hillary being placed in nomination and a big cheering session for her. All the Clinton worship is just going to make it that much more awkward in terms of Obama not picking her as his VP.

[Jason McCullough]

I hope you are right, I think I've mentioned that I suspect both of them will be on their best behavior, so if Obama loses they won't be seen as the cause if nothing else. You can't be pretending that they are superhappy Obama won, or that they would see him losing as an opportunity do you?

Of course they're not happy, but they're professional politicians. They'll suck it up and do what they have to; it's their job.

Throughout the primaries I maintained that Hillary would be a terrible candidate, based on her actions as 1st Lady and in the Senate (at this point I'd like to inject a huge "nya nya nya I told you so"). I have no confidence that she would have been a successful president for the same reasons.

You and the rest of the people loathing the Clintons predicted an endless stream of terrible things they'd do to get power, none of which came true, and when they didn't that was also something that reflected badly on Clinton. You're still doing it; recall your horror that Hillary's name was going to be introduced into nomination! Whoops, turns out that was pre-approved with Obama and was a feel good unifying measure for the party, and has historically been done for lots of losing candidates. The Clinton logic cannot be defeated, however, so ignore that and move on.

Edit: I see Jeff is still thinking this is true for no apparent reason.

[StGabe]

You and the rest of the people loathing the Clintons predicted an endless stream of terrible things they'd do to get power, none of which came true, and when they didn't that was also something that reflected badly on Clinton.

Personally I predicted a lot of things that DID happen:

Hillary went negative
Hillary prolonged dropping out of the race in order to leverage political capital, try for VP consideration, etc.
Hillary ran a heavily mismanaged campaign
Hillary showed ran based on "old" Democrat ideals and showed an inability to compromise on issuesI'm not sure what else you think "we Clinton haters" predicted but my guess is that what you're really referencing is "that one post" by that "one guy" and a few over-the-top blogs you read.

[extarbags]

You and the rest of the people loathing the Clintons predicted an endless stream of terrible things they'd do to get power, none of which worked

Fixed.

[BlueJackalope]

Of course they're not happy, but they're professional politicians. They'll suck it up and do what they have to; it's their job.

You know we are agreeing on that point...don't you?


You and the rest of the people loathing the Clintons predicted an endless stream of terrible things they'd do to get power, none of which came true, and when they didn't that was also something that reflected badly on Clinton.

Uh...try to get FLA and MI votes legitimized? De-legitimize his wins and his voters, introduce race vs gender, leak strategy memos? Lie about a trip to Bosnia, then maintain that lie, wayyyy too long? "It's 3AM..." Squander huge monetary (at the start of the campaign at least) and name recognition advantages? Have an insular, fractous and inflexible campaign staff selected more for loyalty than effectiveness. Gas Tax holiday gimmicks...I suppose I could go on (and on), but why don't you tell me what you liked so much about her campaign.?


You're still doing it; recall your horror that Hillary's name was going to be introduced into nomination! Whoops, turns out that was pre-approved with Obama and was a feel good unifying measure for the party, and has historically been done for lots of losing candidates.

True. I'd like to not have the Clinton's be the focus of 50% of a convention that needs to accomplish two things - Introduce Barack Obama and convince the nation that he's the right choice for president. But, I've spent a little time thinking and reading (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10cottle.html) about this and if handled correctly could actually mollify the more reasonable Hillary supporters. If handled wrong it could harden their opposition.

Aside from that, you do know its being spun/seen as a defeat for Obama and a win for her though (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/the_clintons_are_here_to_stay.html)...yes?

Again, in case you missed it, I think this all could be a net good for Obama. But then I think I'm more flexible and level headed in my "hate" than you are in your slavering defense of all things Clinton.

[Jason McCullough]

I'm not sure what else you think "we Clinton haters" predicted but my guess is that what you're really referencing is "that one post" by that "one guy" and a few over-the-top blogs you read.

Well (http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aquartertothree.com+hillary&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a), a couple show up poking around:

1. That Hillary would contest the Texas results.
2. That Clinton would try to take the nomination at the convention through a floor fight, credentials committee fight, or through superdelegates.

None of these happened. Coincidentally, these were all conspiracy-theory level predictions about the future that assumed Hillary would so something incredibly self-centered and destructive to the Democratic party.

All the other stuff you mention is stuff she actually did, not something you tried to predict. Which is fine; she's a terrible campaigner and did those things. I'm complaining about the Snidely Whiplash predictions of evil - none of those have been true, so why do you guys keep spinning up these theories?

That RCP article is inane. Clinton casting the deciding vote for Obama is part of her evil plan! Sheesh.

[BlueJackalope]

That RCP article is inane. Clinton casting the deciding vote for Obama is part of her evil plan! Sheesh.

Yeah, I'm not saying I agree with that dude, just showing that there is spin putting Clinton's roll call as a defeat for Obama, saying this is how he'd roll over for Putin ect.

[StGabe]

1. That Hillary would contest the Texas results.
2. That Clinton would try to take the nomination at the convention through a floor fight, credentials committee fight, or through superdelegates.


I think it's pretty clear that she did look into both of these options. Several sources said she was considering legal action in Texas (not to mention other states like Nevada). She clearly considered continuing the fight after Obama took the majority of delegates. She made several appeals to superdelegates and tried everything in her power to reframe the requirements for victory.

In the end, she gave up and she's been fairly well-behaved since (although that can't really be said of Bill). However the fact that she didn't keep pushing doesn't mean that people were wrong to wonder if she was going to.

All the other stuff you mention is stuff she actually did, not something you tried to predict.No, it's stuff that I predicted when the race was young and people were talking about Hillary's chances. I was one of many people saying that her claims of "experience" were overblown, that she'd be "divisive", and that what we'd seen out of her in the past boded poorly for her campaign.

...

I just think that you're grossly misrepresenting the "Hillary negativity". A lot of people didn't like here because she ended up being exactly what we thought she'd be. Polarizing, presumptive and a poor leader. Her disingenous attempts to reframe the conditions for victory and her attempt to make the primary as negative and divisive as possible did a lot more damage to her image. Eventually she stopped but that doesn't mean people were wrong to be concerned with her behavior along the way.

[arctangent]

Lincoln's cabinet had him killed? News to me...

Should have been a smiley after that, I guess. Edward Stanton , Lincoln's Secretary of War (I think), was accused of masterminding Lincoln's assassination. No real evidence for it, though.

[Jason McCullough]

You guys consistently predicted she'd take self-destructive actions that would destroy the party to get herself a win. She didn't, limiting herself to mostly reasonable behaviors in the cases your predicted annihilation. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your prediction of her and Bill doing self-destructive actions at the convention that will be bad for the party is also going to be wrong.

Seriously, you're guessing what Hillary's intentions are and then damning her for thinking about it, regardless of the fact she didn't do any of these future crimes you're accusing her of:

"Several sources said she considered legal action in Texas"
"Clearly considered continuing the fight"

She didn't actually do these things! Considering the circumstances, they'd be way, way beyond the bounds of acceptable in the political structure of the Democratic party, in addition to unethical, so she didn't do them. The things she actually did, by contrast, were acceptable and ethical for primary politics - stupidity, attacking your opponent, and trying to exploitable loopholes in election law are pretty much fine. Unreasonable legal challenges and threatening to tear the party apart if you don't get your way when you've lost according to the rules aren't; so she didn't do them.

It's a bit like accusing someone who works out a lot and knows every little detail about the rules of football, and uses that to sack the quarterback, of having a secret plans to win the game by breaking the QB's spine with a sack. After all, if he's willing to exploit the rules as far as the system lets him, who's to say he won't also wildly violate the rules too? Maybe he's also on steroids!

Meanwhile, Obama doing crafty things with the delegate rules and having his surrogates call Clinton terrible things is a-ok; you don't apply the mind-reading about eeeevul intentions symmetrically.

[extarbags]

You guys consistently predicted she'd take self-destructive actions that would destroy the party to get herself a win. She didn't.

Yes she did, Guy Pearce in Memento. She only stopped when it became apparent that it wasn't going to do her any good, perhaps demonstrating more cognizance than we gave her credit for, but certainly no more decency.

[StGabe]

You guys consistently predicted she'd take self-destructive actions that would destroy the party to get herself a win. She didn't. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your prediction of her and Bill doing self-destructive actions at the convention that will be bad for the party is also going to be wrong.

Bah!

Enough with the persecution complex.

First of all, who specifically predicted what? Secondly, has anyone predicted anything in this thread?

People are just commenting on Bill's past behavior. He hasn't been able to give anything but the faintest of praise for Obama. He has been acting very egocentric. He has definitely expressed a lot of displeasure with the DNC over his wife's loss. I'm not predicting that he will blow up but I am wondering how positive he will be.

If we're really going to turn this into a prediction thing, let's at least get the terms set correctly. No one has said that Bill is going to throw a hissy-fit or try to hijack the convention. People are just saying that they expect him and Hillary to make the convention more about them than any past DNC has been about a primary loser and that Bill in particular probably won't end up offering any but the faintest of praise towards Obama. I expect to hear a lot of general stuff like how great it is to have an African American candidate and how great the Democrats are while he studiously avoids directly praising Obama.

[extarbags]

People are just commenting on Bill's past behavior. He hasn't been able to give anything but the faintest of praise for Obama. He has been acting very egocentric. He has definitely expressed a lot of displeasure with the DNC over his wife's loss. I'm not predicting that he will blow up but I am wondering how positive he will be.

This is totally reasonable, by the way, given that the strongest support for Obama he's been able to muster so far is saying that he's qualified to be President because he's, you know, over thirty-five (http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977417055&nav=Namespace).

[StGabe]

She didn't actually do these things!

You're making a serious logical fallacy here. If the weatherman predicts a 95% chance of rain, and it doesn't rain, that doesn't mean the weatherman was wrong. Or to make it even more cut-and-dry if I predict a 16.666% chance of rolling a 6 on a single dice, the fact that I roll a five doesn't make me wrong.

Clinton did a lot of things that made a lot of people wonder how far she was willing to take things. In the end, she did *finally* stop short of dragging things out all the way to the convention. The fact that she did stop, doesn't mean that people were wrong to wonder about it nor does it mean that she didn't lay the groundwork for a longer fight before finally calling it.

[Jason McCullough]

Ok.

1 (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?p=1265579).

It doesn't matter. The Dems in Texas decided to do things that way, and that's their right. Hell, the system in WA state is pretty stupid too, but we all dealt with it. In the end, the party decides how to handle things, not the candidates. Threatening lawsuits now, days before the vote, is a bad idea. Hillary and Obama both knew how this state was set up long ago.

If serious issues come up after the vote, then we can talk. But doing it now seems like an attempt to signal something else.

2 (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1430022&postcount=5).

Its all about the subtext and the maneuvering dear boy, they can say whatever they want, underneath the pretty words, its all knives and poison:

She could place her name in nomination and spark a floor fight, which she would probably lose, but in the meantime cripple Obama with her supporters.

She only stopped when it became apparent that it wasn't going to do her any good, perhaps demonstrating more cognizance than we gave her credit for, but certainly no more decency.

Just for fun, explain to me what she should have done differently then to meet your approved level of decency while still fully using the campaign strengths available to her.

The fact that she did stop, doesn't mean that people were wrong to wonder about it nor does it mean that she didn't lay the groundwork for a longer fight before finally calling it.

The crazier things you guys accused her of doing were consistently categorically different than anything she actually did in the campaign. Staying in the campaign until all primaries are held is a tad bit different from launching a "me or I walk with my supporters" floor fight.

[BlueJackalope]

Ok.

Just for fun, explain to me what she should have done differently then to meet your approved level of decency while still fully using the campaign strengths available to her.

She could have surrendered some of those "strengths" for the good of the candidate and party. Instead she used them to leverage a huge amount of Convention time for herself and husband, when, say what you will about Obama's chances, they have none.

[extarbags]

Just for fun, explain to me what she should have done differently then to meet your approved level of decency while still fully using the campaign strengths available to her.

- Dropped out of the race after the full analysis of Super Tuesday was done and it was clear that she couldn't realistically have won fairly.
- Not attempted to have her fake Michigan and Florida delegates seated.
- Not planned to make the case that superdelegates should overturn actual election results based on her finishing better in the last wave of states.
- Conceded the minute Obama mathematically clinched the nomination, rather than waiting until the weekend.
- Not suggested that it was cool for her to stay in the race because, hey, Obama might get assassinated.
- Not pretended that her hanging on for dear life until the bitter end was about giving everyone a chance to be heard instead of about trying to satisfy her own egomania.
- Not gone unbelievably negative against the man who was undoubtedly going to be her own party's candidate in an attempt to poison the well and push superdelegates into overturning the election results.

You keep saying that we were paranoid and irrational for thinking she'd turn to sleazy, destructive, and self-serving tactics, but almost everything she did was sleazy, destructive, and self-serving.

[Dave Markell]

- Dropped out of the race after the full analysis of Super Tuesday was done and it was clear that she couldn't realistically have won fairly.
- Not attempted to have her fake Michigan and Florida delegates seated.
- Not planned to make the case that superdelegates should overturn actual election results based on her finishing better in the last wave of states.
- Conceded the minute Obama mathematically clinched the nomination, rather than waiting until the weekend.
- Not suggested that it was cool for her to stay in the race because, hey, Obama might get assassinated.
- Not pretended that her hanging on for dear life until the bitter end was about giving everyone a chance to be heard instead of about trying to satisfy her own egomania.
- Not gone unbelievably negative against the man who was undoubtedly going to be her own party's candidate in an attempt to poison the well and push superdelegates into overturning the election results.

You keep saying that we were paranoid and irrational for thinking she'd turn to sleazy, destructive, and self-serving tactics, but almost everything she did was sleazy, destructive, and self-serving.

Truth, every word. I'd add "not playing the race card repeatedly" to the list as well.

[BlueJackalope]

Truth, every word. I'd add "not playing the race card repeatedly" to the list as well.

She did leap to his defense on the Muslim smear though...

“You said you'd take Senator Obama at his word that he's not…a Muslim. You don't believe that he's…,” Kroft said.

“No. No, there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know,” she said.

...while her staff was circulating a picture of Obama in sorta muslim garb of course.

[StGabe]

The crazier things you guys accused her of doing were consistently categorically different than anything she actually did in the campaign. Staying in the campaign until all primaries are held is a tad bit different from launching a "me or I walk with my supporters" floor fight.

I'm still not sure what you think we're saying.

There is evidence that she talked about challenging the results of Texas...
She did try to prolong the battle with Obama long after she had no hope of winning and...
It was really only at the point that every establishment Democrat was behind Obama that she dropped out ...
And even then her initial concession speech was anything but ...
She was extremely negative and divisive during the campaign, to the point that the GOP is still using her ads against Obama and...
She did misrepresent the popular vote using a bogus argument about Michigan and Florida...
And finally her has husband has been handing out back-handed compliments to Obama, ...

Some of us, err, dared to comment on those things and speculate as to where she might be going with it all. I'm not surprised that things ended up how they are, I certainly never PREDICTED that she'd throw a tantrum at the DNC, but for a while it was pretty reasonable to wonder just how far she was really going to take all this.

Why is it so important for you to push the narrative that we are just a bunch of irrational haters?

[Jason McCullough]

- Dropped out of the race after the full analysis of Super Tuesday was done and it was clear that she couldn't realistically have won fairly.
- Not attempted to have her fake Michigan and Florida delegates seated.
- Not planned to make the case that superdelegates should overturn actual election results based on her finishing better in the last wave of states.
- Conceded the minute Obama mathematically clinched the nomination, rather than waiting until the weekend.
- Not suggested that it was cool for her to stay in the race because, hey, Obama might get assassinated.
- Not pretended that her hanging on for dear life until the bitter end was about giving everyone a chance to be heard instead of about trying to satisfy her own egomania.
- Not gone unbelievably negative against the man who was undoubtedly going to be her own party's candidate in an attempt to poison the well and push superdelegates into overturning the election results.

You keep saying that we were paranoid and irrational for thinking she'd turn to sleazy, destructive, and self-serving tactics, but almost everything she did was sleazy, destructive, and self-serving.

I don't think there's anything wrong with doing the items on that list. Seriously, drop out at Super Tuesday even though she's only somewhat behind? Not go negative? What on earth do you think campaigns are supposed to look like?

The assassination comment was hilariously ham-handed, but I don't see how it was "sleazy" any more than Obama's, erm, indelicate phrasing about clinging to God and guns. The race stuff was the only thing that I thought was out of bounds; I'm still not sure what to think of that in light of the campaign memo dump.

Some of us, err, dared to comment on those things and speculate as to where she might be going with it all.

You didn't speculate; you were all totally convinced at each step that she was going to take down the Democratic party with her. Even now you apparently believe she'll ruin Obama's convention out of spite.

[StGabe]

You didn't speculate; you were all totally convinced at each step that she was going to take down the Democratic party with her. Even now you apparently believe she'll ruin Obama's convention out of spite.

Quote me saying either of those things. All you've really got on your side of this discussion right now is taking a lot of speculation that people made, which actually made quite a bit of sense in the context, and running wild with it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with doing the items on that list.

And I and many other people do. The problem here is that you're taking what is really just a difference of opinion about the proper way for a Democratic candidate to act and turning it into "us vs. them" with us over here playing the role of irrational "haters". FWIW, I don't think she should have quite at Super Tuesday but I think the writing was on the wall and after Obama continued to rack up a lead it was clear that that she had no chance of winning legitimately. She should have quit with some dignity (and without $20 million worth of debt). She also shouldn't have pulled the shit she did with Florida or Michigan and should have given a real concession speech when she was 100% mathematically out of it. Finally, Bill's just acting like a 4-year old in the aftermath of all this. I used to like the guy but now it's really hard to.

Not going negative though is a no-brainer to me. Obama could have lost me just as easily had he done so. We aren't the Republican party and I expect for our candidates to act that way. Many of her negative attacks were, at best, childish. Had they been substantive that would have been one thing, but really they weren't. All she did is try to float along with whatever were the worst bits of the current media narrative. Like McCain is doing right now, she never made a case for herself on any particular issue -- she just tried to pick holes in Obama.

[Jason McCullough]

Parsing on speculation vs. prediction won't save you now.

We aren't the Republican party and I expect for our candidates to act that way.

I hope you don't mind losing elections in general, then. The only reason Obama's gotten away with his positive campaign so far is that the fundamentals are so strongly in his favor this cycle.

[BlueJackalope]

Parsing on speculation vs. prediction won't save you now.

What? Show examples, please. Here's speculation - I do, and did, think that she would wreck the democratic party, but by being its nominee, not out of spite.

Here's a prediction - you will be eaten by a bear.

I hope you don't mind losing elections in general, then. The only reason Obama's gotten away with his positive campaign so far is that the fundamentals are so strongly in his favor this cycle.

Thank Odin that enlightened realist hardcases like you didn't determine who should be the Dems candidate then....

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.

[StGabe]

Parsing on speculation vs. prediction won't save you now.

Wait. Let me get this straight. You're charging ME with playing semantics games here? I'm the guy giving you copious examples of actual things that Clinton did that people weren't comfortable with and that lead to speculation. You've yet to really point out any of these which seem irrational yet you still insist that we're nothing but irrational haters.

I hope you don't mind losing elections in general, then. The only reason Obama's gotten away with his positive campaign so far is that the fundamentals are so strongly in his favor this cycle.How's that righteous indignation working for you? Here's the thing. Karl Rove plays that game WAY better than us democrats ever will. I know you're one of those democrats who is just itching to say "I told you so" to the nation but that's nothing but a sure-fire way to hand the election to McCain. For the past 10 years liberals have been itching to have their own Limbaugh. And every time it happens it's a disaster. Hillary was just that. She appealed to a bunch of old-school liberals who can't let go of past slights and were more interested in rubbing Conservative's faces in Bush's shit than actually changing anything.

It's just immature and it doesn't play well. The more ignorant and immature voters are going to vote republican anyway. What we need is really a little bit of what made Bill Clinton so successful: calm, charismatic leadership in the face of immature incivility.

Here's the thing, when have liberals ever really gotten anyway where with negativity? In the end it didn't work for Hillary. If it didn't work for Hillary against Obama, why should it work against the Republicans who are far better at this game?

[Jason McCullough]

Here's the thing, when have liberals ever really gotten anyway where with negativity? In the end it didn't work for Hillary. If it didn't work for Hillary against Obama, why should it work against the Republicans who are far better at this game?

LBJ in 1964 won a completely enormous victory (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/) against Goldwater through negative campaigning, topping it off with the Daisy ad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_(television_commercial)). Truman beat Dewey in 1948 with a negative campaign, and FDR's 1932 campaign was pretty damn mean. JFK also wasn't exactly a choir boy, effectively lying through his teeth about that missile gap. I'm going with them over Adlai Stevenson.

[StGabe]

So what you're saying is that the best you can do is 44 years ago then?

[extarbags]

LBJ in 1964 won a completely enormous victory (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/) against Goldwater through negative campaigning, topping it off with the Daisy ad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_(television_commercial)). Truman beat Dewey in 1948 with a negative campaign, and FDR's 1932 campaign was pretty damn mean. JFK also wasn't exactly a choir boy, effectively lying through his teeth about that missile gap. I'm going with them over Adlai Stevenson.

Hey neat. Any examples of primary campaigns that vicious, at least on the Democratic side?

I don't think there's anything wrong with doing the items on that list. Seriously, drop out at Super Tuesday even though she's only somewhat behind? Not go negative?

After Super Tuesday, she needed to win every remaining contest with like 55% to pull out the win overall. A month later, that number was over 60%. By the time she started her late-in-the-game wins, she was so far in the hole that each win actually drove her further under, because she couldn't possibly win big enough. Meanwhile, she's fucking over every poor bastard that thought that hey, if anyone could be trusted to pay their catering and hotel bills, it's a former first lady, right? Of course, to mitigate this, she's begging for donations among her former supporters, money that would almost all be going to Obama if she had dropped out of the race when it was clear that she couldn't win it. Super classy lady, right there.

And yes, primaries go negative often. They don't, however, usually circulate rumors about their opponent being Muslim, race-bait, gender-bait, religion-bait, fabricate out of whole cloth stories about voyages with Sinbad, and intensify all of these attacks after the battle has already been lost and it can only possibly hurt your party's candidate in the general election. Not if Karl Rove isn't involved, anyway.

Meanwhile, here's classy gentleman Bill Clinton lavishing praise on John McCain's energy policy while looking like a creepy old spinster (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/bipartisan-praise-from-bill-clinton/).

[Jason McCullough]

So what you're saying is that the best you can do is 44 years ago then?

Democrats haven't done so hot in Presidential politics since LBJ. It's also a small sample set.

On vicious primary campaigns, 1968 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968#Democrat ic_Party_nomination) was nasty and only going to get worse when it was short-circuited by RFK's assassination. There's no details on that page, but trust me that Nixonland (http://www.google.com/search?q=nixonland&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) gives plenty.

They don't, however, usually circulate rumors about their opponent being Muslim, race-bait, gender-bait, religion-bait, fabricate out of whole cloth stories about voyages with Sinbad, and intensify all of these attacks after the battle has already been lost and it can only possibly hurt your party's candidate in the general election.

First, I think you're full of it on the Super Tuesday deal; all it would have taken for Hillary to win was another Wright-level disaster popping up around Obama.

Second, when campaigns are contested, they're usually nasty; happens all the time at the Senate and house level. We've had an unusually boring post-1970s set of primaries lately on the Democratic side, probably because they were all locked up almost immediately. Even then, there's plenty of stuff (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/this-is-not-that-rough-democratic.html) from ones in the 1980s.

At one New York City debate late in the 1984 race, Walter Mondale and Gary Hart battered each other so relentlessly that Jesse Jackson almost needed to physically separate them. In an especially heated 1992 encounter, Bill Clinton appeared ready to lean over and deck Jerry Brown.

The television wasn't exactly full of Hands (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIyewCdXMzk) ads this cycle; was there a single race or gender nasty television ad from Clinton or Obama? Print? Radio? I think you guys are listening to the media commentators too much; idiot advisors mouthing off (and note that Hillary did not approve Penn's nasty plans) are just a blown up tempest.

[Gabe Lewis]

First, I think you're full of it on the Super Tuesday deal; all it would have taken for Hillary to win was another Wright-level disaster popping up around Obama.


Isn't that kind of the point? Fighting a war you know you're going to lose on the off-chance that the opponent self-destructs is fairly sad, especially considering its not actually a war, as both people are fighting for the same cause. And you really only get one Wright magnitude scandal per candidate per election right? At a certain point (late April, early May) Hillary would have had to win 80% of the upcoming races to win.

I just find it hard to defend her choice to stay in when the only true outcome was defeat, you're just burning resources at that point. Thats a mark of severe egotism and it grosses me out.

[Jason McCullough]

How is it sad? Leading candidates self-destruct regularly. Dean in 2004 (not even sure how to describe), Tsongas in 1992 (cancer), Hart in 1988 (monkey business). Clinton nearly got forced out in 1992 due to the Gennifer Flowers thing.

[StGabe]

Democrats haven't done so hot in Presidential politics since LBJ. It's also a small sample set.

Well there was that guy Clinton.

Anyway, you're just distracting from the real issue where it's clear that you're wrong. Democrats haven't been getting any traction, whatsoever, with negative campaigning. Not since Rove, et al, cornered the market. Democrats who start going negative just come off as pushy know-it-alls picking on the plucky, homespun Republicans. It just turns into nerds vs. jocks, and nationwide, the jocks still win (which is changing, but only very slowly).

We've had plenty of attempts to go negative recently and you're certainly part of a larger group of liberals who desperately want to be able to spend an entire election cycle trashing Bush (and not without justification). They just aren't going anywhere.

I think that Obama could work a bit more on his economic spiel and try to push McCain on certain issues a bit more but that's just armchair politicking. Generally he's doing a pretty good job and he isn't shedding credibility or coming off as shrill like Hillary did.

...

Basically it comes down to a respin of the old internate adage:

"Don't get in a flamewar with a (modern) Republican. They just bring you down to their level and win with experience."

40 years ago, the narrative was a lot different and the mechanisms for controlling the narrative were different as well. What worked then has little to do with now. Both parties are vastly different than what they were 40 years ago as well.

And if you look at that current context, I think it's obvious that democratic campaigns based on negative campaigning are a dead-end. Not to even mention the fact that most of us aren't such dyed-in-the-wool democrats that we would even want a candidate who acted that immature and relied on negativity and ignorance to win an election. I'm tired of "permanent campaign" mentality running our national government and frankly Hillary did little to differentiate herself from the exact sorts of tactics that I despised in Bush's administration. Winning isn't more important than making the world better.

[StGabe]

oops double post

[BlueJackalope]

How is it sad? Leading candidates self-destruct regularly. Dean in 2004 (not even sure how to describe), Tsongas in 1992 (cancer), Hart in 1988 (monkey business).

Ah Paul Tsongas, I liked that dude.

For what its worth, I didn't mind that Hillary kept campaigning after Super Tuesday. Or that she kept campaigning after Obama reeled off 12 in a row (pretty much mathematically eliminating her). But compare how she campaigned vs how Huckabee campaigned, or Edwards in 2004, they both avoided harming the eventual nominee. The nature of her campaign was not to talk about herself, but to tear at and weaken Obama. She never changed her tone from the days she compared him unfavorably to McCain and her self. (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gVZ2XCLgvUJDEKcTfcgfD06pZQyw)


"I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002," she says in the Republican's ad.

Clinton faced virulent criticism during the primaries that she had crossed a line by explicitly praising McCain to the detriment of Obama, and was warned that those attacks would come back to haunt the likely Democratic nominee.

Writing in the Huffington Post just after Clinton's "lifetime of experience" remark, former Democratic presidential contender Gary Hart said there were unwritten rules in politics.

"One of those rules is this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party's nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the presidential contest is concerned," he wrote.She also spammed the victim button so hard that its driven 28% of her voters away from Obama (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/its_no_longer_just_about_hilla.html). Some even into Johnny Mac's camp -

A stubborn 18 percent of Clinton's female voters vow to back McCain, according to a poll for Lifetime television networks. Another 6 percent plan to support neither major-party candidate.You've repeatedly accused people of being irrational Hillary haters without a shred of proof in the face of actual things she has done. I don't hate Hillary because she is a *Clinton, or because she is woman (I slapped Rogen like a cheap cut of meat for his mindlessly misogynistic postings about her, for instance). I don't like her based on her, her personality, sense of aggrieved victimhood and entitlement, her inflexibilty and repeatedly demonstrated incompetence. Her main qualification was that she was married to Bill Clinton, so even as a feminist Icon, she failed.

She was exactly what the democrats and the country did not need, an inflexible, insular, incompetent more qualified by nepotism than experience or temperament. And, if I'm reading you right, you would support any democrat that had the qualities to actually defeat McCain, none of which Hillary has displayed (quite the opposite). So defend her all you want, but don't think you are actually persuading people to disbelieve their lying eyes.


*I actually didn't like the dynastic implications of a 2nd Clinton in office, but that wasn't a huge issue.

[Jason McCullough]

StGabe, I'm a fundementals guy; I think the Democrats lose because they too a terrible job selling their position, or don't have one in the first place, not tactical issues like negative ad ratios. Negative can be good or it can be bad, I just really roll my eyes at this democrats have to be all saintly and positive goo-goo stuff. I'm a little confused how Democrats are magically unable to use negative campaigning, too.

Obama's made a decision to run a positive campaign so far; good for him, I guess. We'll see how it works out. I kind of suspect it'll be irrelevant once that monsterous ground game of his gets going, though.

[extarbags]

First, I think you're full of it on the Super Tuesday deal; all it would have taken for Hillary to win was another Wright-level disaster popping up around Obama.

Really? Even though the first Reverend Wright "disaster" happened a month after Super Tuesday?

I can't find the Super Tuesday analysis right now, but there this (http://www.newsweek.com/id/118240) excellent article from early March, still before Wright, which I'm sure you read at the time, and which lays out an incredibly optimistic scenario for the Clinton campaign that shows her still losing; every single contest after that, win or lose, made it even harder for her to pull it off. Outside of her dream scenario of Obama getting assassinated, there was no way she could have won the election fairly after that point. She wasn't hoping for an Obama magic meltdown that the whole world knew wasn't coming, she was hoping that she could pull enough strings within the party administration that they'd give her the nomination despite her not winning it in the primaries.

None of this is news, Jason. This wasn't hand-wringing hysteria on the part of the people who knew from the beginning that Hillary Clinton was a sleazy, unfair, and indecent politician. That's what actually happened.

[Jason McCullough]

She wasn't hoping for an Obama magic meltdown that the whole world knew wasn't coming, she was hoping that she could pull enough strings within the party administration that they'd give her the nomination despite her not winning it in the primaries.

You can read her mind, I guess? "Stick around and hope for a game-changing event" is also perfectly compatible with the record. She was close enough a major event could given her the whole thing.

[Matthew Gallant]

The best thing about Hillary's anti-Obama campaign is that it makes the McCain campaign think they have a shot at pulling it off. Other than that it was an embarrassment. I wanted to give her an elbow when she said that if the Democrats ran things like the Republicans (referring to winner-take-all), she'd be the nominee.

[StGabe]

StGabe, I'm a fundementals guy; I think the Democrats lose because they too a terrible job selling their position, or don't have one in the first place, not tactical issues like negative ad ratios.

I agree that they have problems selling their position. Playing down to Republican strengths just doesn't help them. At the level of negative campaigning the Republicans win. Mostly the Democrats have just had a huge charisma-gap. Kerry and Gore were just Dukakis again. Obama was by far the most charismatic Democrat in the field this year and I think that gives him the greatest chance to win.

You seem to come to politics with a sport-enthusiast mentality. The democrats are your favorite team and it's all just about how they can win. I think you're both terribly wrong about how they can win and I think you've lost sight of the point of all this. Right now we have a fundamentally dysfunctional national government and I think this "us against them" mentality both works better for Republicans (Democrats are only making gains after problems became so bad that partisan bickering had to give up the spot light) and, far more importantly, guarantees that our government is ineffectual and focused more on re-election than on any sort of progress. I'm exhausted with politicians who exist to dazzle us with non-issues like Reverend Wright attacks and off-shore drilling. Hillary clearly showed us she was part of this school of politicking and it turned me off well before I even knew who the heck this Obama guy was. I'm well beyond voting for specific issues. I just want basic competence and integrity. Negative campaigning is childish and shows an inability to raise the conversation to a level where any progress can be made.

Now I know you're probably not going to agree with that. I can see you're still quite entrenched in the politics-as-sport mentality. However, you can at least appreciate that this is where a lot of us are coming from and it means that we disliked Hillary for real and rational reasons. Whether you agree with those reasons or not is completely beside the point. And in fact, there's more than a tinge of irrationality in your "attack dog" position in defense of Hillary against people who just clearly didn't like her as much you did.

[Jason McCullough]

You seem to come to politics with a sport-enthusiast mentality. The democrats are your favorite team and it's all just about how they can win.

If I'm a sports fan about anything, it's about socialism/liberalism/progressivism/whatever it is this week. I only care about the Democrats as far as they push what I want. Otherwise they can go stuff it.

Now I know you're probably not going to agree with that. I can see you're still quite entrenched in the politics-as-sport mentality. However, you can at least appreciate that this is where a lot of us are coming from and it means that we disliked Hillary for real and rational reasons. Whether you agree with those reasons or not is completely beside the point. And in fact, there's more than a tinge of irrationality in your "attack dog" position in defense of Hillary against people who just clearly didn't like her as much you did.

I actually don't like Hillary that much. I just find your guys certitude that she's some sort of uniquely evil politician who shares more with Karl Rove than Obama endlessly baffling and worry that you're going to get suckered on other things if that's how you think.

[extarbags]

You can read her mind, I guess? "Stick around and hope for a game-changing event" is also perfectly compatible with the record. She was close enough a major event could given her the whole thing.

I almost buy this for the day after Super Tuesday, but what about a month later? What event short of her pie-in-the-sky fantasy assassination could have changed the game enough that she won every remaining state with 60-65%?

[extarbags]

Also, no, it's not mind-reading. Were you asleep for that part of the campaign? The stated goal of the Clinton campaign at that point was to make the case that the superdelegates should give her the nomination despite her having fewer pledged delegates based on wins in later states.

[BlueJackalope]

I actually don't like Hillary that much. I just find your guys certitude that she's some sort of uniquely evil politician who shares more with Karl Rove than Obama endlessly baffling and worry that you're going to get suckered on other things if that's how you think.

We probably seem to be harder on Hillary because she's one of our own. Imagine if the Republicans were as hard on their incompetent dynastic aspirants to the presidency.

[StGabe]

I actually don't like Hillary that much. I just find your guys certitude that she's some sort of uniquely evil politician who shares more with Karl Rove than Obama endlessly baffling and worry that you're going to get suckered on other things if that's how you think.

Our supposed certainy of her "evil" is your own imagination. You're the only one using that word.

Other than that, we don't think she's unique. That's exactly the problem. We do believe she's Rovian. Because hey, if it walks like a Rove and talks like a Rove ... what's the difference?

The struggle between the Democrats and the Republicans is a struggle for competence, for tackling complex issues with nuanced solutions and for moving forward instead of staying the same or moving backwards. Rovian politics is about reducing the discussion to the lowest common denominator and is an attack on all 3 of these issues. By reducing the conversation to the lowest common denominator, competence becomes untestable, simple solutions pass for complex problems and people worry more about an irrelevant mixture of smears and sloganeering than whether things are getting or worse.

And where we differ is that you still seem to think it's alright, as long as it's your side doing it.

Hillary picked Rove's side in this. She consistently went lowest common denominator. She consistently used smears and slogans instead of making convincing arguments for real change. And in the end, it showed up in the competence of her campaign. Sure, she crafted a nice little narrative for herself ("experienced", ignoring her vote for war in Iraq, etc.) but it didn't really have much to do with reality. When she started to lose her seeming lock on the election all she could do was latch on to criticism of Obama instead of offering a new approach or new ideas.

To me she was a losing proposition, a statement that if they couldn't beat Rove, they Democrats ought to join him. And as I've said several different ways: I think that the Republicans win this fight anyway. I'm not sure that we can really co-opt their methods without becoming them because the method of discourse doesn't allow for much in the way of progress. It is fundamentally manipulative and serves to obfuscate real problems, seeks only short-term placation instead of real solutions, and turns politics into a process of manipulation instead of a process for solving problems.

[Andrew Mayer]

Anyone want to take bets on what the Republicans will attempt to gin up into a "controversy" in order to blunt the bounce?

[Jason McCullough]

Also, no, it's not mind-reading. Were you asleep for that part of the campaign? The stated goal of the Clinton campaign at that point was to make the case that the superdelegates should give her the nomination despite her having fewer pledged delegates based on wins in later states.

You stated "her dream scenario of Obama getting assassinated" and "She wasn't hoping for an Obama magic meltdown that the whole world knew wasn't coming", neither of which can be determined without reading her mind.

Also recall we disagreed on the superdelegates giving it to her being fair or not, what with it being explicitly part of the rules and all.

Our supposed certainy of her "evil" is your own imagination. You're the only one using that word.

It looks like NoWayJose was the only person to actaully call her evil. I recall a few people here who thought she faked tearing up, though, to pick an example; you guys act talk about her like I talk about Richard Nixon.

To me she was a losing proposition, a statement that if they couldn't beat Rove, they Democrats ought to join him. And as I've said several different ways: I think that the Republicans win this fight anyway. I'm not sure that we can really co-opt their methods without becoming them because the method of discourse doesn't allow for much in the way of progress. It is fundamentally manipulative and serves to obfuscate real problems, seeks only short-term placation instead of real solutions, and turns politics into a process of manipulation instead of a process for solving problems.

Like I said, I don't think the Democrat's losses are rooted in the GOP's sleazy tactics. "Lose the racist vote in the 1970s, watch the non-ideological post-war consensus fall apart, spend the next thirty years trying to put back together a winning coalition" explains pretty much everything near as I can tell.

[JeffL]

My opinion, Democrats have done themselves a disfavour with all of this "Republicans only win because they play the evil attack game so much better than Democrats do" rhetoric. It may make someone feel better when they lose - oh, we just lost because we refuse to dip to their level - but it results in ignoring the real reasons for defeat.

Bush vs. Gore - there were no super evil attacks on Gore that went beyond standard political campaign criticism, and Gore did pretty well himself with the ads implying Bush was accountable for a black man being chained to a pick-up truck and dragged to death and old people in ads, in tears because Bush was going to drive them out of their homes and make them eat dogfood. But the simple fact was that the Gore of 2000 was a mere shadow of the relaxed, dynamic Gore of today; he was a very poor campaigner, had no real vision that he sold, etc. Bush convinced America of the whole "compassionate conservative" concept, and was also able to sell himself as someone who had been successful working in a bipartisan manner while in Texas. BS or not, it was something America could latch onto and it was attractive to a country weary of the partisan bickering of the later Clinton years. (again, it is irrelevant to the argument whether Bush actually WAS what he sold - just that he had a package and vision that he could sell to America.)

And other than Clinton, what have the Democrats put in front of America? Mondale, Dukakis, Gore 2000? Kerry? The only person Kerry could beat in a national campaign was maybe Dukakis, and don't believe that if not for the Swift Boat stuff he would have won - he was as much a dud as Dukakis. It's why Obama may represent the first real chance for the Democrats to get it right in a long time - as long as Obama and Democrats don't fall back into the "only stupid people will vote for McCain" arrogance again, that has cost them election after election.

[StGabe]

Like I said, I don't think the Democrat's losses are rooted in the GOP's sleazy tactics. "Lose the racist vote in the 1970s, watch the non-ideological post-war consensus fall apart, spend the next thirty years trying to put back together a winning coalition" explains pretty much everything near as I can tell.The sleaze is just the tip of the iceberg and it's really only a small part of what concerned me about Hillary. As I stated above, my biggest problem is with the reduction of politics to the lowest common denominator and politicians who are more interested in simple/false narratives than in actual progress.

Sleaze is just one of the many tactics that Rove, et al, have used to bring politics down to the LCD. Sleaze does this when it basically reduces an important conversation about an actual issue into a conversation about some perceived personal flaw. Both McCain and Hillary engaged in a lot of this. Attacks that are about real issues I have little problem with, from Hillary, McCain or Obama. Attacks that really just diversions away from the issues, again from any of these candidates, signal to me a politician that's more interested in the game than their opportunity to effect positive change.

I never felt much connection between the Hillary campaign and reality. I felt that they were fundamentally poll-driven and manipulative in their techniques. They were more concerned with perceptions of competence than actual competence. Etc.

These are all things I also associate with Bush and Rove. It was not a comparison that made me like Hillary. And yes, I speculated about how far she was going to take it. During the latter end of the primary she showed a startling disconnect with the reality of the race. I base that on things she actually said, and acts she (and her husband) actually made.

[StGabe]

My opinion, Democrats have done themselves a disfavour with all of this "Republicans only win because they play the evil attack game so much better than Democrats do" rhetoric.

Again it's a larger problem than that. The Republicans have been winning by eliminating reality and objectivity from the process and reducing every issue to its lowest common denominator. Sleazy attacks are just one way to do this. Other very successful techniques have included "who would you want to drink beer with" politicking and wedge-issue politics like oil-drilling and gay marriage. The war in Iraq was another such issue which reduced very complicated political issues to "do you support the troops?". Basically the Republicans win if they can reduce any issue to a one-liner. The Democrats win when they can get people to look at the bigger picture and expect real results/competency. Doing that requires far more charismatic leaders than Gore/Kerry. Obama does a much better job. It also helps that the GOP has fucked things up so badly that they haven't left much room for spin.

[extarbags]

You stated "her dream scenario of Obama getting assassinated"

She said that outright.

and "She wasn't hoping for an Obama magic meltdown that the whole world knew wasn't coming",

Again, this wasn't even possible as far as I can tell.

[BlueJackalope]

Like I said, I don't think the Democrat's losses are rooted in the GOP's sleazy tactics. "Lose the racist vote in the 1970s, watch the non-ideological post-war consensus fall apart, spend the next thirty years trying to put back together a winning coalition" explains pretty much everything near as I can tell.

You continue to miss the charisma gap. In the modern era (say Truman on) the more Charismatic candidate has won. (Carter vs Ford and Nixon vs McGovern are the exceptions and the winning candidate had strong hands to play in both. Carter had Nixon and Nixon had the war). Carter, Mondale, The Duke, Gore and Kerry, though more qualified, intelligent and earnest than their opponents all came across like ninnys, in one way or another.
Bill Clinton didn't and he won.

Americans do not vote their interests in Presidential races, they vote on personality (the "have a beer with" test). Hillary could never pass that test. I'm not saying that is fair, just stating the truth.

[JeffL]

Again it's a larger problem than that. The Republicans have been winning by eliminating reality and objectivity from the process and reducing every issue to its lowest common denominator. Sleazy attacks are just one way to do this. Other very successful techniques have included "who would you want to drink beer with" politicking and wedge-issue politics like oil-drilling and gay marriage. The war in Iraq was another such issue which reduced very complicated political issues to "do you support the troops?". Basically the Republicans win if they can reduce any issue to a one-liner. The Democrats win when they can get people to look at the bigger picture and expect real results/competency.

But don't you think all successful candidates for the presidency do that? Clinton was the ultimate "who would you want to have a beer with?" and simplified issue campaigner. He'd famously say, in a drawl that he would exaggerate while campaigning, with a big ole country grin, "Wellll, my opponent may think so-and-so, but all I know is that you people are all feeling so-and-so!" And people ate it up. Both sides strive for the effective one liner, because that's what works. "Change." "Bipartisanship" "The Social Security Lock-Box" "It's the economy, stupid."

Sticking to the presidential elections, the Democrats in recent elections have not lost because they were just so intelligent and nuanced and complex and lost to the hillbillies with simple messages. The lost because they didn't have any real clear message or vision that could be articulated. They lose because they are all about "vote for me because the other guys suck" without the "and here's why you should vote for me."

Again, this is where Obama has the opportunity. He has been able to articulate, during the primaries, a vision of why you should vote for him, not just that he's the alternative to the bad guys. Much of it has been as much emotive as anything, but that's another topic. ;)

[Jason McCullough]

She said that outright.

Really, she stated Obama getting assassinated was her "dream scenario?" Those actual words?

Again, this wasn't even possible as far as I can tell.

Some people disagree, including maybe presidential candidates!

Sleaze is just one of the many tactics that Rove, et al, have used to bring politics down to the LCD. Sleaze does this when it basically reduces an important conversation about an actual issue into a conversation about some perceived personal flaw. Both McCain and Hillary engaged in a lot of this. Attacks that are about real issues I have little problem with, from Hillary, McCain or Obama. Attacks that really just diversions away from the issues, again from any of these candidates, signal to me a politician that's more interested in the game than their opportunity to effect positive change.

What better age of politics are you talking about? American politics has been sleazy since the country got started, at every election cycle. Even during the Good Old Days of the post-war consensus you had Nixon red-baiting, McCarthy, Truman attacking the do-nothing congress (in hilariously venomous terms, according to that David McCullough biography - no relation), LBJ accusing Goldwater of wanting to start a nuclear war, Kennedy's made-up missile gap, Eisenhower pretending to have a secret plan to end the Korean war; the examples are endless.

[Dave Markell]

If I'm a sports fan about anything, it's about socialism/liberalism/progressivism/whatever it is this week. I only care about the Democrats as far as they push what I want.

One thing I like about you, Jason (and despite how often we clash, there are such things) is that you're both upfront and unapologetic about your political orientation. Of course, it's easier to say "I'm a socialist" now than it was during the Cold War, but the word still has quite a bit of attached stigma. I'm pretty sure that you were honest back then, too, though I can't google for posts you made in the '80's.

[BlueJackalope]

I'm pretty sure that you were honest back then, too, though I can't google for posts you made in the '80's.


His posts had a lot of hair gel and wore skinny leather ties in the pattern of a piano. That's all you need to know.

[StGabe]

What better age of politics are you talking about? American politics has been sleazy since the country got started, at every election cycle. Even during the Good Old Days of the post-war consensus you had Nixon red-baiting, McCarthy, Truman attacking the do-nothing congress (in hilariously venomous terms, according to that David McCullough biography - no relation), LBJ accusing Goldwater of wanting to start a nuclear war, Kennedy's made-up missile gap, Eisenhower pretending to have a secret plan to end the Korean war; the examples are endless.

I think in the past we've seen a lot of politics that was both better and worse. I think what happened is that a bunch of the more negative aspects of prior campaigning were just distilled, by Rove, the neocon movement, et al, into something purer and more malignant.

The neocon movement, when you get down to it, is entrenched in weird sort of belief that one can create one's own reality. And this message was taken into campaigning in a particularly virulent fashion. Whereas negative campaigns and partisan attacks are old news, the ability to so perfectly coordinate a narrative is new. Whereas TV was important as far back as JFK, the neocon movement was really able to turn politics into a made-for-TV movie in a way that hadn't been done before. I think that Bush Jr.'s election really speaks to this. His father was elected just 12 years prior, but in a very different climate. I don't think Jr. could have been elected back then, frankly because there's no way someone so incompetent and unintelligent could have been taken seriously. Say what you will about Bush Sr., he was a far more accomplished and competent than his son and was riding on the coattails of Reagan at that.

It was only with the perfection of the right-wing narrative-spinning that we got to electing Bush Jr. Even when he was first elected, it was hard to find people with positive things to say about his qualifications. Concerns were deferred to "well he'll have a good cabinet" (and look how that turned out). It was also at this point where I think the Republicans ceased to represent any actual set of issues or ideals. They found out that they didn't need to! Say what you will of Bush Sr, Reagan, Nixon, etc., those guys at least held to a certain set of conservative ideals and won their elections on these issues at least as much as they did on any other particular tactic. If Republicans were winning based on the perceived successes of conservative governance I could deal with that far better than I can deal with the current mess.

Narrative-control as politics has just gotten out of hand. It's a plague upon both parties. Even people here, who I generally consider to be fairly intelligent, have gotten pretty caught up in a lot the media-managed, narrative-danglers like offshore drilling, Reverend Wright, etc.

I guess for me it long ago stopped being about Democrats versus Republicans and became about competent and cogent governance based on reality and not narrative. Hillary seemed to represent the Democrats ceding to Republicans the right to define the way the game is played.

[Jason McCullough]

One thing I like about you, Jason (and despite how often we clash, there are such things) is that you're both upfront and unapologetic about your political orientation. Of course, it's easier to say "I'm a socialist" now than it was during the Cold War, but the word still has quite a bit of attached stigma. I'm pretty sure that you were honest back then, too, though I can't google for posts you made in the '80's.

I was 13 in 89 and had no internet access. I can't recall if that was before or after I broke with nutsoid christianity though. :)

[extarbags]

Really, she stated Obama getting assassinated was her "dream scenario?" Those actual words?

When asked (paraphrasing) "why the fuck are you still in this race when you definitely can't win," her response was "who knows, lots of things can happen, for instance, RFK had the nomination locked up but then he got assassinated." It's not hard for anyone to discern what she was getting at.

Some people disagree, including maybe presidential candidates!

Again, please give an example of something that would have resulted in her winning every or almost every election with the insane margins she needed.

American politics has been sleazy since the country got started, at every election cycle.

And again, please give a recent example of politics this ugly in a Democratic primary other than this year's.

[Anders Hallin]

That's some fine paraphrasing. As I recall, the question was about the race dragging on, and she said that there had been a lot of races that didn't end until July, and brought up RFK as an example (considering that had been in the news recently, maybe not so surprising).

[BlueJackalope]

Anyone want to take bets on what the Republicans will attempt to gin up into a "controversy" in order to blunt the bounce?

They won't need the GOP to gin up the controversy as long as "Hillary Harridans" (http://www.slate.com/id/2198218/)* are willing to do it for them.

They are given unlimited airtime, so long as they continue to threaten to topple the entire edifice of the Democratic Party in pursuit of some ephemeral, unreachable sweet revenge.I have to believe that Hillaryis44.org and this PUMA website (http://blog.pumapac.org/2008/08/20/vp-open-thread/) are being run by the same GOP dirty tricks operation.

EDIT: The more I look at it the more I think its a scheme to sell t-shirts and mugs, they are just stealing the business plan from bad webcomics. I wish I had thought of it.

To each and every elected official on the list below, you took money from Barack Obama and George Soros and as a thank you, gave BO your support. Well, your constituents want Hillary Clinton and we do too!

Vote for her in Denver or we will not re-elect you. That is 4,500,000 MINIMUM Americans who will knock you out of your function in November. Do you really want to take that chance?

NO MORE MS GOOD GIRLS!!


*not my term read the damn link.

[Anders Hallin]

The leader of the PUMA campaign donated to McCain back in 2000. I guess because she was such a trustworthy Democrat she decided to divide and conquer?

[Jason McCullough]

When asked (paraphrasing) "why the fuck are you still in this race when you definitely can't win," her response was "who knows, lots of things can happen, for instance, RFK had the nomination locked up but then he got assassinated." It's not hard for anyone to discern what she was getting at.

Again, please give an example of something that would have resulted in her winning every or almost every election with the insane margins she needed.


You said it was her "dream scenario"; you think she was dreaming of it? What she was "getting at" was that something might change, like, oh a videotape of Obama agreeing with the "controversial" stuff Wright said. He'd be toast.

And again, please give a recent example of politics this ugly in a Democratic primary other than this year's.

Already did downthread, 1968. Other examples: 1984 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United_States)_presidential_prim aries,_1984):

At a roundtable debate between the three remaining Democratic candidates moderated by Phil Donahue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue), Mondale and Hart got in such a heated argument over the issue of U.S. policy in Central America that Jackson had to tap his water glass on the table to get them to simmer down.

1992 (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/archives/1992/9203150032.asp):

Bill Clinton accused Democratic presidential rival Paul Tsongas yesterday of wanting to pound the middle class ``into the dirt" during a testy debate in which the candidates repeatedly slapped one another on economic and tax policy.

Clinton lashed out at Tsongas after the former Massachusetts senator suggested Clinton's proposed middle-class tax cut was ``candy" to voters at a time when the nation needed sacrifice.

Clinton, who leads in polls in both states, not surprisingly drew the most fire. He shot back that Tsongas was the race's ``Santa Claus for the rich," offering the wealthy a capital-gains tax cut while refusing to give tax fairness to the middle class.

My favorite line:

Brown also accused Clinton of promoting ``slave labor" in his right-to-work state during economic development missions to Korea. The shot at Clinton came early on - and backed up the pro-labor message he has been promoting in an effort to win over union workers.
``Governor Clinton went to Korea and bragged, ... `Come over here, we've got slave labor here,"' Brown said.

[extarbags]

You said it was her "dream scenario"; you think she was dreaming of it? What she was "getting at" was that something might change, like, oh a videotape of Obama agreeing with the "controversial" stuff Wright said. He'd be toast.

I sincerely doubt it, as far ahead as he was.

As far as the rest of that stuff goes, you're right, apparently sleazy assholes aren't new for Democratic primaries after all; I admittedly didn't follow any before 2004.

[Jason McCullough]

I didn't even mention Hymietown! :)

[extarbags]

I didn't even mention Hymietown! :)

The word "Hymietown" just puts a smile on my face every time.

[bigdruid]

As far as the rest of that stuff goes, you're right, apparently sleazy assholes aren't new for Democratic primaries after all; I admittedly didn't follow any before 2004.
You guys are missing the point.

No matter how bad the internecine fighting got during past primaries, candidates followed the first rule of party politics: that no matter how bad your primary opponents are, *all* of them are better than *any* candidate from the other party.

Hillary broke that rule on several occasions. That's why what she did is so wrong, and was *not* politics as usual - as a result, the Obama campaign has still not fully recovered.

[StGabe]

The more recent things that Jason quotes are honest-to-goodness policy issues. Not personal attacks. Getting hot and heavy over an important policy issue? That's fine and even to be expected.

It's all of this focus on completely personal stuff and the extreme distortions of reality, all in service to the almighty Narrative, that I find extremely poisonous to our political system. Hillary came across as without scruples when it came to pushing personal issues and spinning her own versions of reality.

[Jason McCullough]

I don't think calling Bill a slavemaster, pander bear, or santa claus is a policy issue.

[StGabe]

I don't think calling Bill a slavemaster, pander bear, or santa claus is a policy issue.

Except they are:

"slavemaster" -- He didn't say that word, you're sensationalizing it a bit, and the context was talking about outsourcing labor to Korea.

"panderbear" -- link? I couldn't find that in either link you offered and Google gives back a lot of random hits. Clearly however the extent to which a candidate may be guilty of pandering to public whims is a valid campaign issue.

"santa claus" -- invoked in a conversation about the capital gains tax

Basically if you want me to draw out the distinction it's between comments of this form:

#1: "you are an <X>" where X is just some personal trait that is something that'll get the media churning

AND:

#2: "you are <X> because of <Y>" where Y is some important issue and X is a tacked on label

Ideally a candidate wouldn't have to use names when making a comment of the latter form, but it's still far better than just name-calling for the sake of name-calling or name-calling based on a Y that is purely subjective and personal thing.

[Jason McCullough]

See the fifth link here; Tsongas regularly called Clinton a pander bear (http://www.google.com/search?q=clinton+pander+bear&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) who would do anything to get elected. Pretty much identical to the flip-flop criticism you regularly hear.

slavemaster" -- He didn't say that word, you're sensationalizing it a bit, and the context was talking about outsourcing labor to Korea.

Oh yes, Brown was totally framing the disagreement in a respectful manner. He definitely wasn't smearing Clinton.

[StGabe]

See the fifth link here; Tsongas regularly called Clinton a pander bear (http://www.google.com/search?q=clinton+pander+bear&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) who would do anything to get elected. Pretty much identical to the flip-flop criticism you regularly hear.

I didn't ever say I was against "flip-flop" criticism (nor does a search for "pander" give results on any of the three links above). Talking about a politicians voting record is exactly the sort of thing I would like to see. Oversimplifying the issue, not so much (which is really where the attack on Kerry broken down -- it was a smear without any content). What I'm opposed to are personal attacks that have little bearing on competence, are vast oversimplification of issues, or rely on manipulating the media and public perception instead of talking about real issues and reality.

For example, it was clear that Obama's comments about rural voters "clinging" to certain issues were taken out of context and that he had a far more nuanced view of the issue. In fact, Hillary had made very similar comments in the past. Her harping on that issue came across as fundamentally dishonest. Her harping on the issue of the differences between her healthcare program and Obama's was fine (except when she started to exaggerate and misstate some of the differences). Similarly the experience issue was nothing but huge exaggerations on Clinton's side. No reasons were given for that -- she just clung on to a media narrative because it was useful. Similarly the whole Reverend Wright issue had nothing but guttural appeal and was completely unrelated to what I would consider as valid and important issues. Etc.

That's where we saw her go Rovian.

Oh yes, Brown was totally framing the disagreement in a respectful manner. He definitely wasn't smearing Clinton.

I laid out an analysis for you of where I draw the line. I suggest you read it and respond to that. Brown's comment was about outsourcing. He happened to use a name in making that comment. Not the most tasteful way to put it, IMO, but nor is this what I've been complaining about. That's an ancient style of politics and has nothing to do with the more recent techniques developed by Rove, et al.

If you have a problem with us commenting that Hillary was picking up tricks from Rove then you better at least be clear as to the differences between Karl Rove and Paul Tsongas.

[Linoleum]

Pander Bear was my favorite Care Bear.

[JeffL]

As much as I loathed Hillary's elitist, entitled methods in this campaign, I really don't have a lot of heartburn over her actual comments on Obama. The only one that I thought crossed the line in terms of unspoken rules was when she unfavorably compared him to McCain - she just came out and stated in that ad that McCain would be a better and safer choice than Obama. McCain should be using this a lot more than they have already, as it puts Obama in the position of having to critique Hillary to effectively refute it.

Where Hillary really showed her colors was when started doing things like saying the caucuses weren't really valid votes and unfair and were tools of disenfranchisement (when she lost them,) campaigning that the Florida and Michigan votes should count and that since the sec of state in each state certified them, they should be counted as legitimate, more BS after it was clear she had lost the delegate vote by claiming that what people should really count is the popular vote (counting FL and MI,) the electoral vote of the states she won, etc. Even when Obama went officially over the top in the delegate count, rather than graciously congratulate him, she said she had to determine what she should do next and whether she should concede and when (much like a losing Super Bowl team refusing to acknowledge the loss after the final gun and stating that they were deciding whether they should concede or not.)

[Jason McCullough]

For example, it was clear that Obama's comments about rural voters "clinging" to certain issues were taken out of context and that he had a far more nuanced view of the issue. In fact, Hillary had made very similar comments in the past. Her harping on that issue came across as fundamentally dishonest.

Meanwhile, Hillary's comment about RFK being assassinated, even though it was blatantly obvious she didn't hope or expect Obama to be killed, however, was a sign of her neferiousness. Parse all you want, I guess.

That's an ancient style of politics and has nothing to do with the more recent techniques developed by Rove, et al.I have no idea why you think Rove came up with the concept, or that's it a recent technique. Rumors were circulated when Thomas Jefferson was running, 200+ years ago, that he had fathered a black child (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=itx&q=thomas+jefferson+campaign+rumor&btnG=Search) (third link). No really, read the quotes in that link, they're hilariously venomous.

[JeffL]

Meanwhile, Hillary's comment about RFK being assassinated, even though it was blatantly obvious she didn't hope or expect Obama to be killed, however, was a sign of her neferiousness. Prase all you want, I guses.



I have no idea why you think Rove came up with the concept, or that's it a recent technique. Rumors were circulated when Thomas Jefferson was running, 200+ years ago, that he had fathered a black child (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=itx&q=thomas+jefferson+campaign+rumor&btnG=Search) (third link). No really, read the quotes in that link, they're hilariously venomous.

Yeah, gotta go along with Jason on this one (gad, you know how much that hurts me, Jason??? ;) ) Obama's comments on clinging to guns and religion could have easily been translated to mean precisely what he said, but I have a difficult time believing anyone believing that Hillary was hanging in there hoping for an assassination.

And where in the world did people come up with the idea to give Rove the credit for coming up with negative nasty campaigning? That's been going on as long as there has been politics, and there's nothing in either of Bush's runs any nastier than than you can find in campaigns in the past (on both sides.)

[StGabe]

I have no idea why you think Rove came up with the concept, or that's it a recent technique. Rumors were circulated when Thomas Jefferson was running, 200+ years ago, that he had fathered a black child (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=itx&q=thomas+jefferson+campaign+rumor&btnG=Search) (third link). No really, read the quotes in that link, they're hilariously venomous.

You aren't really reading what I'm saying, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering. I've said half a dozen different ways that's not just about personal attacks.

Anyway, I think that anyone who doesn't recognize the rise of a Rovian tactics as a huge shift in national politics isn't paying attention. What Rove, et al, did has a far larger scope than the notion of circulating rumors and making personal attacks and it wouldn't have had a a parallel in Jefferson's time (i.e. without the modern media).

The Rovian mentality, as I've discussed, is about creating one's own reality. The next step is selling this to the media and through them, to the nation. It's this fucking Narrative thing. Narrative has always been there but it was never so easily controlled.

Rovian politics is about using a million little distractions to never get to the point. It's about spending the majority of your time making fun of the other guy instead of actually talking up your own policies. It's about promising anything that your constituents want and masking the consequences. It's about masking a lack of real solutions and policies behind catch phrases like "support the troops". It's about turning the conversation, as much as possbile, into "us vs. them" and making sure that "us" is bigger than "them" (i.e. by turning liberals into nerdy elites to the Republican everyman jock). It's about repeating the same things over and over again until people believe them, reality be damned.

Calling a guy a name in a debate is one thing. Getting the media to talk about that at the exclusion of anything else, for a couple of weeks, is the real goal of Rovian politics.

And Hillary gleefully partook of this. Repeating obvious falsehoods until people believed them. Actively engaging in dishonest personal attacks, just for media spectacle. Gladly accepting the "us against them" framework for politics.

And I think that's exactly the wrong direction for our country to go. The more we focus on the media spectacle and narrative, the less actual information we consume about the real issues. The crowning achievement of the Rovian movement was getting Bush elected twice. He was a guy with fundamentally zero qualifications for president. They basically proved that if you manipulate the narrative enough, there is absolutely no requirement for proving competency. Say what you will of past Republians, they did have at least some qualifications.

Of course now we've had 8 years of seeing just how poorly that sort of politics goes. And IMO we have a chance to break out of it. Hillary, however, represented a different path -- i.e. the Democrats merely deciding to go along with the Rovian movement. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em and all that.

And as I've said, party's don't really matter much to me anymore. Cogent, rational, competent governance is all I want. So for me, the Democrats agreeing to let the Republicans set the rules for how politics will go forward, is a big failure. Also, as I've said, I think the Republicans win more easily if we allow them to set the rules. I just don't think that Democrats will ever play the Narrative game as well.

[Jason McCullough]

What Rove, et al, did has a far larger scope than the notion of circulating rumors and making personal attacks and it wouldn't have had a a parallel in Jefferson's time (i.e. without the modern media).

There's been a recent upswing, but it started with Nixon, not Rove (see Nixonland), and I think it's a reversion to the mean, not something new. I don't particularly understand what you think about Hillary is new; other Democrats have been meaner and fought on more irrelevant terms before. Can you give an example of something she's said, or a set of things, that we haven't seen in the last 50, 100 years?

[JeffL]

Yeah, Nixon with his enemies list, network of rumor mongers, etc. was a real pro at what is now called Rovian politics. I guess I just don't see it being as different from the past elections i've seen over the last decades as some do.

[bigdruid]

Can you give an example of something she's said, or a set of things, that we haven't seen in the last 50, 100 years?
OK, which other party politician said the equivalent of "McCain and I have both passed the 'commander in chief' test, but Obama hasn't"? Praising the opposition party over your own party members is just poisonous, and I would say nearly unprecedented (although undoubtedly it has happened in the course of 200+ years of politics in this country).

[Sarkus]

OK, which other party politician said the equivalent of "McCain and I have both passed the 'commander in chief' test, but Obama hasn't"? Praising the opposition party over your own party members is just poisonous, and I would say nearly unprecedented (although undoubtedly it has happened in the course of 200+ years of politics in this country).

In that particular instance I would agree with your point, but that does not negate the general truth of Jason's argument, which is that election tactics have generally always been mean-spirited and full of distortions, if not outright lies. Rove is just the most recent well-known practitioner, and focusing only on that ignores other aspects of his approach that were legitimate and successful.

[Jason McCullough]

OK, which other party politician said the equivalent of "McCain and I have both passed the 'commander in chief' test, but Obama hasn't"? Praising the opposition party over your own party members is just poisonous, and I would say nearly unprecedented (although undoubtedly it has happened in the course of 200+ years of politics in this country).

I'm pretty sure it's not that unusual when you're going to be running against an established foreign policy opponent in the general, but I have no idea what google query would deliver it to me.

Personally in retrospect the only thing she did that bother me was the bizarre messaging around race. She didn't actually approve that Penn memo, and never said any of the odd stuff herself; maybe her terribly-run campaign couldn't restrain themselves? Did Clinton's open-heart bypass damage his brain or something? Maybe she didn't really mind? No idea. Everything else, though, just looked like a sign of what a shit campaign team she picked.

Fun fact, by the way: Mondale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1984) didn't have enough primary delegates to win 1984 outright; the supers had to put him over.

[StGabe]

For me the thing that stands out in the recent election cycles is the willful denial of reality. I feel Hillary and McCain are complicit in that.

And calling someone a throwaway name in a debate, isn't in the same ballpark.

As for things that have happened in recent politics that haven't happened in the past hundred years? I don't think we've ever elected a president (once, let alone twice) so singularly unqualified as Bush. I feel that the rise of the media narrative as well as a certain sort of politics predicated on manipulating that narrative are at the heart of what made it possible for that to happen. For the umpteenth time, it's not *just* about personal attacks.

Nixon, et al tried to do some nasty shit, sure. But to me it's not about "evil" or "good". It's not a moral judgement, purely a practical one. Trying to be evil isn't as bad as succeeding. Without such a pervasive media, I don't think they really accomplished what Rove, et al did. They were still fundamentally talking about real issues and reality, most of the time, even if they went into partisan bickering and personal attacks at times.

I think there are a number of ways in which things have gotten better. If anything, it's because things were decent during the Clinton years that the Republicans were able to bait people into so abandoning reality in the first place (and now that things aren't great, reality is peeking back in). Overall, however, I've seen this trend to try to create reality instead of discussing it directly.

And Hillary was completely complicit with that. She was regularly out there pushing the narrative, whether it had any semblance to reality or not. I found that dishonest, insulting at times, harmful to the Democratic party, and harmful to our entire political process.

In the age of such pervasive media I feel that we need politicians who are willing to inspire us to consider more than just the best one-liners, gaffes, and photo ops of the campaign season but also the actual issues and realities we face. Clinton never made a strong case that she was interested in that. She only seemed interested in whatever ticked up her numbers, reality be damned. And really, Rove et al were the same, and pioneered a form of doing this that couldn't have happened 20 years ago, let alone 100.

[Anders Hallin]

For me the thing that stands out in the recent election cycles is the willful denial of reality. I feel Hillary and McCain are complicit in that.
I think you have to provide some examples. What did she do, claim that she'd break up NAFTA?

Look, I get that you have problems with the way that narratives are pushed, but that narratives are easy to control, I don't really see. Clinton's campaign, for example, in many ways got the narrative against her, as she was put forward as a ball-busting, Clinton-politics bitch, and we all know what that means. There was a bit of that in the MSM, and a whole lot of it in the blogosphere.
Of course, the narrative in these two fields aren't the same. There is a constant competition of narratives, and of having your framing accepted. For instance, the narrative of John McCain as a decent fellow having mean advisers can be one, as well as Hillary Clinton as the conniving mastermind behind everything said by anyone in her campaign or by her supporters is another, Barack Obama as "above" the dirtiness of regular politics is yet another. It all shifts depending on situation and which the opponents are.
I don't know if it's liberal guilt, or what, but I think we both know that the supposedly liberal MSM is quite happy to grant framing of issues and narrative to the Republicans, sort of as the "average Joe" position, and then spend all their time talking about how Democrats can make their position palpable to the electorate, even when the Democratic position should be the mainstream one.

Controlling the narrative is important, but it's not a new thing by a long shot, it's just that all the competitors of the narrative these days are national and/or global actors. Often it's not even done in a conniving way - Reagan changed the narrative in the US in the early 80s, for example. Was it a dishonest narrative? I'd say yes, but was the narrative-changing in itself dishonest or "Rovian"? I think that would give Rove a whole lot more credit than he deserves.

The question of today is of course if Obama's narrative of hope and change, that got quite a solid foundation during the primary campaign, can manage to meet the challenge of the "Republicans are the average American"-narratives and "McCain is a decent white man and a hero"-narrative. No narrative can completely win, of course, but the dominant one certainly does affect people, since it provides the very framework by which we think of candidates.

[JeffL]

The two above posts by StGabe and Anders are the kind of input that keep me coming back to this forum (so you can blame them! LOL!) - even where I disagree, both are intelligent, articulate and thought provoking.

I'm torn - I have this gut feeling that the media has far too much power these days in who gets elected, as the average American gets their entire input from the media sound bytes, and does very little digging on their own. But Obama's nomination - does that prove or disprove the hypothesis? Because it was all Hillary, all the time in the media up to the Iowa primary. She had already been crowned Queen in late 2007.

It's always been packaging. JFK, Carter, Clinton, great examples. Eisenhower by all accounts was a bit of a dufus in politics but a war hero that was packaged well. Bush was packaged well in 2000, but IMO it was only Democrat incompetence that gave him the presidency in 2004 - a lousy, unlikeable candidate and a poorly run campaign. Poor packaging of a poor package.

The reason I'm concerned about things like a stupid ad on McCain having more real estate than the average person is that the narrative that got so many Americans excited about Obama was the whole package of a new age of politics, a message of rising above the old partisanship and coming together ("There is no Red America, there is no Blue America",) a message of a change. That narrative falls flat when the ads America see for Obama are petty attacks on how many houses he owns, and it will deteriorate into a back and forth of two rich guys pointing fingers at the other's wealth. Obama is at his best when he is inspiring people - what gets him elected is finding a way to get above it all and articulate his vision for a new direction for the country.

[StGabe]

I think you have to provide some examples.

Sure. I mean I think it was obvious in much of what she was saying.

For example, when Obama made a comment that basically amounted to saying that Reagan wasn't 100% evil (but possibly 90% evil) she tried to crucify him with it, using the typical partisan narrative. I thought this was really dishonest. It's not as though Obama was supporting supply-side economics or anything. Still I feel that Hillary saw a narrative-makking opportunity and jumped on it without hesitation.

A more obvious example was Terry McAuliffe and Hillary going on and on about their bogus numbers regarding the popular vote. Their strategy was transparent: if you say something enough times, to people who want to believe you, then they will regardless of reality. McAuliffe ended up giving Bush's press secretary's a real run for their money and in the end, even though they lost, they did end up convincing a bunch of diehard supporters that Obama had "stolen" the election.

Another example was the whole experience narrative. I think it's pretty clear that the Clinton campaign realized early on that people would conflate time under the camera with experience. So they ran with it. Realistically speaking, she really didn't have that much experience, arguably less than Obama (a few failed initiatives as first lady, then slightly more senate time, but nothing to match Obama's state legislature time).

There's a lot more ... but those are several examples that leap out at me. If you want me to break out Google I can do better. A lot of the postmortems on "why did the Clinton campaign fail?" seem to have confirmed my view of the campaign. Apart from just being fractious and incompetent, the campaign was clearly focused on manipulating polling and narrative at every step. None of the stories I've read talk describe their process as involving any analysis of which solutions are best, or which the campaign or Hillary were most passionate about. They all talk about analyzing polling data to find out which narratives are getting the most traction.

Controlling the narrative is important, but it's not a new thing by a long shot, it's just that all the competitors of the narrative these days are national and/or global actors.

Narrative isn't new, certainly. But I basically see it as the enemy. Any time someone makes a decision based on a story, instead of on real data, they're significantly reducing their chances of making the right decision. Bush showed that with the right stories, it was possible to get people to support a lot of wrong decisions. If there's a close analog in the past century I think it's stuff like McCarthyism, not stuff like Paul Tsongas calling Clinton a name.

I think that in some ways, narratives used to have a far stronger role in society. I'm thinking about the pre-enlightenment world, where stories created by dictators and churches dictated many of our decisions. And I think the media has been a powerful force, at times, for helping to dispel this cloud and give us better means for understanding the world. Unfortunately I think that force is now being subverted. More recently, media has merged a bit with entertainment and along the way it became narrative-hungry. This change, and say what you will of why it occurred, opened the door for a whole new kind of wrangling over narrative that I think is extremely destructive. At the core of it is punditry a narrative which basically says that it's ok to reduce those who disagree with you to stereotypes and that politics is about winning and losing, not about negotiation and decision-making. Politics is just more entertaining if it's considered as a team sport. It's also completely unproductive. IMO, politics is a process for making decisions between parties who will never completely agree. That requires a tacit agreement to listen to the other side and be willing to compromise.

To loop back to Hillary, I felt she really embraced the pundit-mindset and it was one of the things that I most disliked about her.

...

To the extent that narrative is necessary and/or not going anywhere, I'm always going to support narrative that I think is constructive as opposed to narrative which serves no purpose to divide, alienate and divert from the real issues. I.e. I'll take a politican who inspires people to work together and look at compromise solutions to one who only seems interested in pushing an agenda and making the other guy look bad.

[Jason McCullough]

I don't think we've ever elected a president (once, let alone twice) so singularly unqualified as Bush.

Military
Zachary Taylor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Taylor#Election_of_1848), Grant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant), and Eisenhower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower) had no qualifications beyond being generals.

Closest
Grover Cleveland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland) was a judge for a while, a mayor for a couple terms, a single governor term, and then President. Harding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding) had a single term as state senator, single term as Lieutenant Governor, lost a race for Governor, and won a single term as senator.

Worse
Arthur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_A._Arthur) had only been NYC port collector, but he only got the position by ascending from VP status when Garfield got shot. Pierce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce), near as I can tell, had no qualifications at all.

So I'd rank him in the bottom tier of qualifications, but he's not worst ever.

By the way, Kennedy had more qualifications than I thought (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy) - 3 term congressman, 1 term senator. Wilson and Hoover have light resumes in government, but they were heavily involved in quasi-public stuff (academics, conferences) and influential so I think that makes up for it.

[extarbags]

Worse
Arthur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_A._Arthur) had only been NYC port collector, but he only got the position by ascending from VP status when Garfield got shot. Pierce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce), near as I can tell, had no qualifications at all.

Arthur wasn't elected though, and is therefore ineligible for that challenge. Pierce was a brigadier general.

[Gav]

Military
Zachary Taylor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Taylor#Election_of_1848), Grant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant), and Eisenhower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower) had no qualifications beyond being generals.

Eisenhower's generalship was a pretty serious thing, with a lot of responsibility and a lot of planning, though, arguably more so than GWB's tenure as governor.

And, of course, Taylor's and Grant's presidencies are not exactly studded in glory.

Closest
Grover Cleveland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland) was a judge for a while, a mayor for a couple terms, a single governor term, and then President. Harding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding) had a single term as state senator, single term as Lieutenant Governor, lost a race for Governor, and won a single term as senator.

Worse
Arthur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_A._Arthur) had only been NYC port collector, but he only got the position by ascending from VP status when Garfield got shot. Pierce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce), near as I can tell, had no qualifications at all.

I don't know much about Cleveland, but I think Arthur doesn't really count -- he wasn't actually elected to be President. Pierce was a Congressman, and he was a big party activist. I don't know if he was better than GWB, but I don't know that I'd say he was worse.

[Jason McCullough]

Ah, I didn't read Pierce close enough.

[StGabe]

I don't think any of those guys had the history of incompetence and failure that Bush had. In fact, one of my complaints in general is that people think that listing off previous political positions is a way of judging a person's qualifications.

Take for example Grover Cleveland. He had a rather successful career as a lawyer, then sheriff then mayor of Buffalo. In these roles he garnered a reputation as an honest man who fought special interests and corruption. Similarly he won a lot of praise as blunt, but fair governor of New York.

Now if you add up the years in various political roles, it may not be more than Bush. However I'd say he was a far greater candidate, overall, based on his merits and specific accomplishments.

[Jason McCullough]

Well I don't know what you mean by accomplishments then. Using that criteria Perot was well-qualified, or would have been after a single term as governor, which doesn't sound right.

[StGabe]

Using that criteria Perot was qualified.

I certainly don't think that Perot was disqualified purely on the basis of his lack of "insider" experience. I think it's striking that today people consider tenure as a politician as the primary means of judging qualifications of a candidate. It speaks to the power of a certain narrative, one which I think is harmful to politics.

Here's a list of hastily written requirements that I look for in a candidate:

Intelligence
Leadership
Competency / Managerial Skills
Integrity and commitment to principles
Ability to get things done, even against opposition (via compromise, raising awareness, etc.)
Cogent ideas about issues that I care aboutNow my list may not be the same as your list but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I would hope that every voter would have some list like this and that prior positions held would only matter in-so-much as it helped a given candidate acquire the qualities that necessary to be a good president. In Bush's case I don't think anyone ever made a good case for his past experiences qualifying him to be president. In fact his past experiences were a mess of failures, incompetence and croneyism.

[Jason McCullough]

Well, of that list Bush could plausibly argue to a moderate independent voter that he had all of those but intelligence, based on his bipartisan work as governor with the Democratic legislature, and his compassionate conservative.

He really didn't look this stupid or insane back in 2000.

[StGabe]

He really didn't look this stupid or insane back in 2000.He looked pretty stupid. He couldn't speak well. His record in Texas involved little bipartisanship. His key issues were: passing a law to allow concealed weapons, tax cuts and the promotion of faith-based programs. He was a solid C student in college (he got a C- in economics, though he claimed he got a B). He ran an oil company into the ground (but made a lot of money on his stock anyway). He received a plush position in the National Guard during Vietnam, despite scoring the minimum passing score on his exam. There was evidence that he got in due to a family connection. He later inexplicably ended his flying career by refusing to take a physical. He admitted that he joined the National Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam (by the way, this is all stuff that was known about him before the CBS/Dan Rather scandal). He had been arrested for driving under the influence and disorderly conduct (though charges were dropped on the latter).

But yes, he was a popular governor of Texas for a while and his dad was a President.

I'll take Grover Cleveland's record any day.

[BlueJackalope]

Just to move back on topic for a moment -

The McCain campaign is trying to set unreachable goals for Obama to reach. (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/22/mccain_tries_to_raise_expectat.html)

Sen. John McCain is predicting that the Democratic convention will produce a huge bump for his rival, Sen. Barack Obama, part of an effort to raise expectations for his historic nomination.

In a memo from one of his top strategists, McCain predicts that "We believe Obama will see a significant bump, and believe it is reasonable to expect nearly a 15-point bounce out of a convention in this political environment."

A 15-point bounce?

[JeffL]

Just to move back on topic for a moment -

The McCain campaign is trying to set unreachable goals for Obama to reach. (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/22/mccain_tries_to_raise_expectat.html)

Well, Dukakis came out of the convention with a 14 point lead over Bush Sr. so maybe it's not so ridiculous.

[BlueJackalope]

And here is a pretty even handed assessment of Bill and Hillary's roles at the convention.

http://nymag.com/news/politics/powergrid/49519/

[Jason McCullough]

He looked pretty stupid. He couldn't speak well. His record in Texas involved little bipartisanship. His key issues were: passing a law to allow concealed weapons, tax cuts and the promotion of faith-based programs.

....and those were bipartisan issues in Texas. He wasn't the governor of Massachusetts here.

I agree with your assessment of his skills and record, but that's because I'm a well-informed person that loathes the son of a bitch. The average voter didn't see any of that.

[StGabe]

....and those were bipartisan issues in Texas. He wasn't the governor of Massachusetts here.

You're confusing me here. Texas is a very conservative state. Faith-based programs, tax cuts and concealed weapons permits are very conservative issues. Where's the bipartisanship? I would expect these to be bipartisan issues in Massachusetts, not the other way around. Bipartisan to me means that politicians on both sides are working together to pass legislation on compromise issues.

I agree with your assessment of his skills and record, but that's because I'm a well-informed person that loathes the son of a bitch. The average voter didn't see any of that.

Exactly my point. There was no compelling argument for his qualifications. It was all narrative. People didn't see it because they were too busy watching the show. Which demonstrates the power of the show that Rove et al managed to put on. IMO, none of the presidents elected in my lifetime have been so fundamentally unqualified and I'm not aware of one being elected ever. In comparison, Grover Cleveland sounds extremely qualified.

[Jason McCullough]

"Bipartisan" refers to party membership, not ideology. Bush did pass lots of stuff working with the Democratic-controlled state legislature; he had a famously good relationship with powerful Democrat Bob Bullock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Bullock), the Lieutenant Governor, which is actually a more powerful position than governor in Texas due to quirks of the state's legal designs. Remember that his campaign in 2000 was about moving past the divisive Clinton years. It was totally bullshit, but it was a perfectly plausible narrative at the time. Hell, I didn't think he'd be that bad, he didn't run as a crazed neocon; he ran as a compassionate conservative, remember? He was also tremendously popular in Texas; he was literally the first two-term governor of the state.

Otherwise, I'm not sure why you think qualifications matter all that much. Obama, for example, has 4 years federal legislative and 7 state legislative level, with some community organizing before that; Clinton had 12 years state executive and basically no other real job. Bush has 6 state executive years and a bunch of hilarious famous-guy rainmark private jobs. If you chop off 2 years for the presidential campaiging you get 2/7, 10, and 4, which makes Obama and Bush a lot closer. Clearer McCain is a better idea with his ~30 years of experience? What's the magic dividing line in there?

[StGabe]

I give up. I think I pretty clearly defined what the dividing line is but I really just don't think you're listening at this point.

[Jason McCullough]

I'm listening, I just don't understand what you're saying. Was Bush supposed to work with the non-existant liberals in a state where the Democrats are conservative (and the GOP way more so) to count as bipartisan?

[StGabe]

I'm listening, I just don't understand what you're saying. Was Bush supposed to work with the non-existant liberals in a state where the Democrats are conservative (and the GOP way more so) to count as bipartisan?I'm not the one who mentioned his bipartisan work in Texas (was that at the same time that he got June 10th declared "Jesus Day"?).

Other than that, you seem to be agreeing with me while refusing to admit on technicalities. Bush was clearly unqualified, which you seem to agree with. It was a narrative, not any sort of reality, that got him elected. You also seem to agree with this.

IMO realizing this should make one pretty damn wary of politicians who see their primary task as manipulating narrative. The moment you say that the politician with the best story wins, you give up on any objective measures of competency. That is the outlook of the pre-enlightenment world, for fucks sake. Hoping that the Democrats will just do a better job of subverting reality is just giving up. It ends up with a Democratic party that's no better than the Republicans have been.

Just look at the Republican party. Say what you will of it Reagan and Bush Sr., at least they had some principles and ideas. I didn't agree with them on many issues but I at least valued their role of dissent in government and understood their ideas. The modern day Republicans, as they embraced this mentality of creating their own reality, lost all sense of accountability and their identity with it. If all you care about, and all you need to do win, is creating stories then you don't need to worry about principles and results. I can't say that I really see modern Democrats improving under this new mode of politics either. Most of them just seem to care about partisan bickering and making the other side look bad ... which accomplishes absolutely nothing!

...

To be realistic for a second, I don't really think that narrative is going to just "go away" or that it's realistic to expect a politician to ignore it completely. That said, I'm sure as heck not going to cheer for a candidate who embraces this style of politics as completely as I felt that Hillary did. Politics based on story-making is still a retreat to the Dark Ages.

[Jason McCullough]

You originally claimed his record in Texas involved little bipartisanship; it did.

I actually don't think Bush was unqualified. On paper he wasn't the most impressive resume we've ever put on a ballot, but from a non-ideological perspective he was enh, and from the GOP perspective he was fine.

Every single politician since the start of the Republic has gotten elected on a narrative of some sort of another. I'd say that's because there's quite a bit of evidence that people are wired for making decisions based on the stories they tell each other. When is this supposed good old days you think exist? George Bush I and his Willie Horton ads? Reagan, for god's sake?

[Sarkus]

To get back to the Hillary factor for a moment, I've been surprised by the lack of discussion about this poll (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26314990/) (or maybe I missed it.)

Yet perhaps the biggest factor keeping the presidential race close has been Obama’s inability to close the deal with some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters. According to the poll, 52 percent of them say they will vote for Obama, but 21 percent are backing McCain, with an additional 27 percent who are undecided or want to vote for someone else.

This all hit home for me tonight when I was discussing the Biden choice with an older couple (mid 60s) I know. They were big Hillary supporters during the primary. Tonight one of them brought up the lawsuit by that conservative whacko who's been trying to argue that Obama wasn't born in the US, and they actually took it seriously! I tried to explain that story has been around for a long time and that nobody has found any legitimacy to it, but they were convinced that it would knock Obama out and Hillary would replace him.

[StGabe]

I actually don't think Bush was unqualified. On paper he wasn't the most impressive resume we've ever put on a ballot, but from a non-ideological perspective he was enh, and from the GOP perspective he was fine.

I can only provide the same answers to this so many times. Basically everything Bush accomplished in Texas was about as conservative as is possible. Above you basically agreed to how horrendous the rest of his resume is. The story of him as a bipartisan in Texas is exactly that -- a story.

Every single politician since the start of the Republic has gotten elected on a narrative of some sort of another.

I've agreed to this in several places. It's just that it's getting worse. To the point that narrative-manipulation is THE central platform of the Republican party.

To repeat: politics based on picking the best story is fundamentally a return to the Dark Ages. While we can't ignore it, we shouldn't cheer Democrats on who take it up as their own core principle.

There is really only one good argument for supporting this mode of politics: that it's a necessary evil and that we just need to ride it long enough to win control of our nation. Guess what? That's essentially the same argument made for a beneficient dictatorship such as communism. Once you create a system where stories matter more than realities, there's no path to going back and it only works so long as the person in charge of the story actually has your best interests in mind. Once someone else gets into power there's no system in place to keep them accountable.

[Talisker]

To get back to the Hillary factor for a moment, I've been surprised by the lack of discussion about this poll (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26314990/) (or maybe I missed it.)
I wish Hillary would say something like this in her convention speech: "If you voted for me in the primaries, but you're supporting McCain over Obama now, sweet Jesus are you retarded. Seriously."

[Jason McCullough]

I can only provide the same answers to this so many times. Basically everything Bush accomplished in Texas was about as conservative as is possible. Above you basically agreed to how horrendous the rest of his resume is. The story of him as a bipartisan in Texas is exactly that -- a story.

It's one of the few true stories about him! He did, in fact, consistently work with the Democrats in Texas to pass things. What are you talking about?

[StGabe]

It's one of the few true stories about him! He did, in fact, consistently work with the Democrats in Texas to pass things. What are you talking about?

For what? Let's hear some examples.

I'm pretty tired of this quibbling. So I may only be 95% right on a certain comment, I guess that calls into question my whole thesis?

Answer me this: if this level of deceptive/partisan/narrative-wrangling was just as strong in 1980 as it was in 2000 then what caused the core principles of the Republican party to crumble in 2000? And yes, for the record, I'll say that they were getting a bit shaky for some time leading up to that. However I think 2000 was a clear break. After that it's almost impossible to find any coherent conservative ideals in the platform other than a few social conservative issues like abortion and gay marriage.

[JeffL]

I can only provide the same answers to this so many times. Basically everything Bush accomplished in Texas was about as conservative as is possible. Above you basically agreed to how horrendous the rest of his resume is. The story of him as a bipartisan in Texas is exactly that -- a story.

I've agreed to this in several places. It's just that it's getting worse. To the point that narrative-manipulation is THE central platform of the Republican party.

To repeat: politics based on picking the best story is fundamentally a return to the Dark Ages. While we can't ignore it, we shouldn't cheer Democrats on who take it up as their own core principle.



First, when you talk about Texas as pure conservative, remember that this is the state that elected Ann Richards as governor. The one that so famously dissed George Bush 1. Ann Richards was extremely popular in Texas, and Bush was a real underdog at the beginning of the campaign against her (I lived in Texas at the time.) He ran a very effective campaign, and it was his performance in several debates against her that turned the tide, and he won.

He really was well known in Texas as someone who did not play party politics while he was governor - not always the case in Texas. He worked extremely closely and well with the Democrats in Texas, including, as Jason mentioned, the Democratic Lt. Gov. His reputation as an effective bipartisan leader was deserved (in contrast, Ann Richards had a reputation for being quite hostile to the Republicans in the Texas government.)

Bush also successfully started up a number of independent oil exploration companies, and was considered a good general manager of operations with the Rangers, and it was very common to see him sitting in the stands eating a hot dog with fans, sometimes out in the bleachers.

The fact is that hindsight is pretty clear, but Bush had every appearance of truly being a bipartisan president for a country that truly wanted that. I fully expected Bush to be a good president and voted for him.

As to the politics being based on picking the best story, and I say this as an Obama supporter - isn't that exactly what both candidates are doing? Obama has no lengthy history of effectiveness at a national level, no experience of any kind to show why he would be the person most effective in dealing with Putin when he decides to invade the Ukraine or other countries, no experience of any kind for dealing with a national economy. Isn't all he has to sell a "story" or narrative?

[Jason McCullough]

Ok, George Bush, bipartisan governor.

1 (http://texasweekly.com/newsletter/tw20020211.html) - stays out of races against incumbent Democrats in the state.

Frontline (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/bush/governor.html) review of Bush as governor. The Grover Norquist stuff is a joke, but read what the Dallas Morning News guy has to say about education.

In retrospect he was forced to not be a dick by the power structure, but at the time he had a good reputation.

Answer me this: if this level of deceptive/partisan/narrative-wrangling was just as strong in 1980 as it was in 2000 then what caused the core principles of the Republican party to crumble in 2000?

What do you mean, core principles crumbling? Losing the election? Their core principles of borrowing money to cut taxes, corruption, corporate whoring, and pretending to care about abortion are as intact as they've ever been.

[StGabe]

What I was asking, is what actual bipartisan stuff got passed if the hallmarks of his governorship were concealed weapon laws, faith-based programs, tax cuts and "Jesus Day".

And if you can't see difference between the Republican Party of this decade from that of the 80's and 90's then I don't think you really have any understanding of the Republican party. Know thy enemy and all that.

[Jason McCullough]

You could read the second link. He passed education stuff that everyone liked. Note the rest of his agenda, while you and I don't like it, had the democrats voting for it too. Hell, he lost on replacing the property-tax based school funding system in texas with sales taxes (http://www.governing.com/archive/1998/jul/bush.txt), which would gone a long way to fixing some of the shit schools.

The differences between the GOP today and back then are they got really unlucky this time, the neocons finally got some power, and the remaining moderates are gone. Same basic deal though.

[Sarkus]

The differences between the GOP today and back then are they got really unlucky this time, the neocons finally got some power, and the remaining moderates are gone. Same basic deal though.

Pretty much, though the moderates did some stupid things to put themselves in that situation.

One of the big ironys IMHO is that Bush Sr. was a moderate and his son is a neo-con (or at least a tool of them.)

[StGabe]

You could read the second link. He passed education stuff that everyone liked.

I did. And a lot of that education money was tied to programs that were religious. Sure, he worked with Democrats in a very conservative state to pass what was mostly very conservative legislation. And I think you're pointing to one small point of brightness in what is still, overall, by far the worst resume a president has had to offer.

The differences between the GOP today and back then are they got really unlucky this time, the neocons finally got some power, and the remaining moderates are gone. Same basic deal though.

Except that it had little to do with luck. What we see from 1980 on, with a significant break in 2000, is a shift towards a form of politics without accountability to reality. The neocon movement is all about creating narrative and once it got a foothold, there wasn't a system for keeping Republicans accountable to traditional conservative principles. While I think it's safe to say those were already quite weakened by 2000, they have all but disappeared outside of a few social conservative issues.

There really is no defense for politics based on "the best story wins". It's just a return to the dark ages.