The Liberal Politics & Current Events Book Club discussion
Reality-Based Chat. Speak!
Now that's something I hadn't thought of! It makes perfect sens. And it makes the prospect of them being stuck with no one but each other even more enticing! I wonder how narcissists treat each other? I think some brave university should study it. Mark wrote: "Beverly wrote: "http://gawker.com/ayn-rands-capitalis...
I'd like for the Ayn Rand fans to be awarded a 1-way ticket to this "libertarian paradise." Did..."
Lisa wrote: "That last paragraph doesn't sound like anything to pin ones hopes on. The governor-elect of Illinois spent $29 million of his own money on the campaign. Does anyone besides me find something wrong ..."Sorry, Lisa. I may have done it ill (because I'm angry, and I do see the plutocracy as parasites), but I did mean to proffer some hope. The thing is, they *will* (eventually) respond to the threat of lost Eloi to consume (in an economic sense), because even in politics, the most virulent strains of pathogens tend to burn out, giving way to milder strains (or gentler Morlocks, if you will, that see the advantage in keeping the host alive). It's a mélange of metaphors, and maybe ill-wrought, but the point is that even narcissistic parasites (of the "human" variety) can be motivated by rational self-interest, when finally they perceive the threat of damage to their economic interests. The trouble, currently, is that the "rational agents" (the "establishment wing" of the party of predators) are being preempted by those who are not merely predatory, but seemingly deranged. The hope is that, appearances notwithstanding, the "rational agents" of the Republican establishment do actually wield more power.
As for the disproportionate spending, though, I really can't see a way of remedying that form of electoral nullification. They own five members of SCOTUS.
I am hoping that the Republicans do not initiate impeachment hearings. There is absolutely no basis for it and if they should impeach the president and the senate votes to convict, I fear it will lead to the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. Many of us will be on the streets if it happens. I am still dumbfounded how there could be so many stupid people in this country. Alaskans voted to raise the minimum wage but elected someone who opposes it. This is something that was repeated across the country. Referendums that promoted progressive goals were passed by huge margins but the people who opposed them were elected. The women of Texas did not support Wendy Davis. There is such a disconnect here that I can only conclude that there are people in this country who are just too stupid to vote.
In Illinois, the same thing happened. The referendum to raise the minimum wage was passed by a huge margin, but we elected a Republican governor who opposes raising the minimum wage. Go figure.I don't think that the Republicans will try to impeach Pres. Obama because it's not in their best interest. They have all the cards and don't need to do that. He has only two more years as President. If they bog down the government in impeachment proceedings and get nothing done, they'll look bad and then they'll lose in 2016.
Colleen wrote: "I am hoping that the Republicans do not initiate impeachment hearings. There is absolutely no basis for it and if they should impeach the president and the senate votes to convict,.. there are people in this country who are just too stupid to vote."You're absolutely right, Colleen, and your perception is the central thesis both of Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free and of Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession. I don't think the problem is that those people were born mentally defective, though. I think the stultification of the populace through the decimation of public education (especially in "red" states), and through the use of the corporate media to disseminate and reinforce completely insane beliefs 24/7, relying on sophisticated techniques of mind control and manipulation... are, taken in the aggregate, much more responsible for the irrational, self-destructive behavior of the electorate than any inherent deficiency in their intelligence. They've been made ignorant, stupid and undiscerning.
Though part of the problem, too, I think, is "representative democracy." If people were voting not for corporate proxy representatives whose opponents had been anathematized in the media and in billion-dollar campaigns -- but instead, only and directly for the things they want and don't... they'd be harder to manipulate. There'd be a national minimum wage tomorrow, and I suspect, reproductive freedom and single-payer health care. Because, howsoever brainwashed, people actually want to eat regularly, avoid death through access to healthcare, and control their own bodies. The problem is that they've been brainwashed to believe that the party that largely wants to enact these things is evil, that Obama is some kind of monster (and it's always easy to engage their reptile-brain racism), and that malevolent Randian objectivist sock puppets of the plutocracy who want to immiserate and exploit them... are actually wonderful, "Christian" soldiers of God who will protect them from the imaginary liberal elite and the terrible dangers of scientific literacy (and functional literacy). They're right. The Republicans will protect them from literacy and actual knowledge. Because everyone knows that reality leans to the left.
It looks like there were several reasons why the Democrats lost, and in the case of Illinois, the incumbent governor was just bad. But look at some of the Republicans who won. Brownbeck did a GW Bush in Kansas (without the two wars, of course), lowered taxes on businesses and tanked the economy, but he won. That new female Senator in Iowa is as crazy as Michelle Bachmann, but she won. The Democrats stay home, and the Republicans elect nuts. Of course, both sides (especially in Illinois) elect criminals. That Republican Representative (I think his name is Grimm) who has been indicted in New York won. And although the Democrats support education more than the Republicans do, they're not really anxious for the electorate to be too smart. All of these politicians lie, so they don't want the voters to think too clearly when they are listening to their interviews or watching their commercials. And I like that appeal to the base pun. They appeal to the basest people and to our basest instincts--greed, paranoia, willful ignorance, racism, and other forms of intolerance. That's why the Democrats didn't focus on the President's positive record and instead tried to win on the argument that they weren't as bad as those horrible Republicans.
Mary -- I agree with you emphatically that both sides elect criminals. The question that comes to my mind is whether that isn't in part because criminality is the price of admission to the game. Either because the game is so ruthless that it takes a sociopath to play... or because no one is allowed to accede to a position of power in this country who hasn't, in effect (or literally), sworn a blood oath to some criminal faction or other. All of the people with actual power belong to one of the hydra heads of the kakistocracy, which is an alliance of "criminal" organizations -- criminal at least in the sense that they're all ruthless predators -- and all of the politicians who participate in the Kabuki drama whereby the public is kept deluded and distracted belong to them.But I wonder whether it isn't also the case that our lizard brains (which become especially dominant in people deprived of education) aren't actually attracted by criminality and ruthless predation. We're still atavistically following the alpha gorillas who beat their chests most belligerently. Maybe people, at a very deep level, know their leaders are criminals... and that actually exerts a powerful form of attraction. More in the case of Republicans, though, because they're the "daddy" party, the party of greater militarism, jingoism and overt beating of chests... and they promise to protect us from enemies and fears that they, themselves, have created -- or at least, exploited.
So maybe Brownback was elected because he "pulled a GW Bush," and not in spite of the fact, and the Iowan Bachmann clone because she was crazy, and not in spite of it. If Brownback had actually been able to start two wars (maybe by declaring them against neighboring states :-)), perhaps that would even have helped him, because it would have bolstered his alpha gorilla, "daddy" creds.
I certainly agree that neither party wants voters making conspicuous use of their frontal lobes -- any more than attorneys selecting juries do -- but Democrats, overall, are definitely less inimical to education than Republicans. I think we're always presented with the choice of needing to support the less predatory and virulently insane of two criminal candidates. The Republicans have generally presented us with the more conspicuously insane choices -- but their constituency is attracted by insanity.
Beverly wrote: "Now that's something I hadn't thought of! It makes perfect sens. And it makes the prospect of them being stuck with no one but each other even more enticing! I wonder how narcissists treat each oth..."Beverly - I'm not aware of a study in which narcissists were all trapped together in one room (other than at the Republican Party convention :-)), but Nicholas Holtzman did perform a study on college students at Washington University, some of the conclusions of which were (per Psychology Today) that "The three key problem areas of people high in narcissism were:
Engaging in disagreeable behavior. People high in narcissism were more likely to argue, swear, and become enraged, especially if they were the exploitative and entitled type of narcissist.
Being more likely to shirk their duties. Once again, exploitative and entitled narcissists were the most poorly adapted. It wasn't that they were lazy, but that they didn't become academically engaged.
Using sexual language. The exploitative and entitled were more likely to "talk dirty." Even after controlling for the fact that many sexual words also express anger, the exploiters and entitled used more sexual language in their everyday speech."
Of course these were college students. People who aren't intractably genetically sociopathic may grow out of it to some extent. According to Martha Stout The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us, sociopaths comprise about 4% of the population. One good way of testing for whether someone is a sociopath is to ask whether he or she is a CEO of a major corporation. :-) There is an actual psychometric test for psychopaths (who aren't actually distinguished from sociopaths clinically by the DSM), called the "Hare Scale." It would be interesting to distribute it as a survey at a Tea Party gathering (or one in the Bohemian Grove, for that matter). :-)
If you read that book about the 2008 election, GAME CHANGE, Mark, you probably believe that politicians are all foul-mouthed narcissists. That book was a good read, but I was a little suspicious of all the F-bombs that were dropped. I suspected that the writers were translating. Did these politicians use "screwed," and did either the unnamed sources or the writers translate? When the heavier journalist (I forget their names now) showed up on Bill Maher's HBO show and dropped the F-bomb in his first comment, I had my answer. Then later someone speculated that known-to-be-foul-mouthed now Chicago Mayor Emanuel was a source. That's probably why Obama came off so much better than everyone else in that book. I thought they treated him well because he won.When I was writing about the violent football players and police officers recently, I wondered about nature versus nurture. Did these people become more violent because of their professions, or did they choose their professions because they wanted to be violent? We can ask the same question of politicians. Are narcissists and criminals more likely to become politicians, or are they corrupted by power? I think the good politicians (GW Bush, Bill Clinton) are more likely to be narcissists than guys like Kerry, Gore, and Bush Senior. But I also think the process of running for President or one of the other offices is corrupting (Wasn't there a Robert Redford movie called "The Candidate" that made that point decades ago?), especially now that money plays such an important role in who gets elected (Jerry Brown is an exception).
I'll say this for the politicians, though, they have the courage to put their names on the ballot and risk losing publicly. I actually have more contempt for the strategists and the media folks who clearly love politics but don't have the courage to risk public humiliation than I do the politicians. And by the way, those strategists make more money than the Senators and even the President. Even the strategists who have never won a Presidential race can make millions. The Koch brothers are not just paying for negative commercials, folks.
I don't believe that all politicians are foul-mouthed, Mary, though I do believe that most of them are narcissists and sociopaths. Truthfully, if a politician aggressively pursued a progressive agenda on all fronts, and seemed to be sincere and impassioned in his or her views, then I wouldn't care if she or he regularly emitted a string of scatological words at maximum volume at public events. The problem is, I think, the "agar." What causes a person to seek immense power, and also enables that person to succeed in the pursuit, is determined by the nature of the social matrix. American society (and most societies, though in varying degree) propel narcissistic predators to the top of the political and socioeconomic hierarchy. If you adjust the composition of the medium in the cultural petri dish, then maybe you get slightly better outcomes (it would be hard to imagine more hellish ones). Now, whether narcissism and predation (along with the connections to harness them in the service of self-aggrandizement and the oppression of others) are borne of entitlement (and the very upper echelons of our society engage in multigenerational child abuse intended to ensure that their progeny will also be abusive and capable of firing a million people at a throw), or whether people just reach the top because they possess those qualities innately is a chicken/egg sort of problem, but I don't think the two possibilities are mutually exclusive. Both kinds of empathy-bereft people with severe anger management problems and pathological aggressive tendencies do flourish in the petri dish, and do end up controlling the world.
From Reuters: "Anti-abortion group to move into shuttered Texas clinic"In other news, pyromaniacs are slated to move into an abandoned fire house, and Republicans are slated to move into what used to be the Senate. Also, Guy Montag is scheduled to move into the New York Public Library.
Is anybody else seeing a picture of "W" and an ad for a book about him on their profile page? I mean, I get that I've joined a political group, but gee, don't the ads need to distinguish which type of politics? Yeech.
Beverly wrote: "Is anybody else seeing a picture of "W" and an ad for a book about him on their profile page? I mean, I get that I've joined a political group, but gee, don't the ads need to distinguish which type..."I haven't, but it may be because all of my plug-ins are turned off by default ("default" is mine), so I don't see any ads that invoke flash, e.g. Or it may be that you and I have slightly different profiles insofar as the goodreads ad-allocation algorithms are concerned, or it may be that the placing of the "W" ad was random and indiscriminate.
Some liberals do read books by and about conservatives (even ones who aren't masochistic), and many more liberals are sufficiently well-educated to read actual books, so it could be an attempt to carve a small slice out of a much larger pie... and there, I've run out of hypotheses.
From the perspective of today's Tea Party, I think George Bush was a "liberal." :-)
Of course, from the perspective of your moderator, Barack Obama is somewhat right of what used to be "middle." The tectonic plates have been shifting beneath us, and not in a helpful direction.
I haven't seen the ad on goodreads, Beverly, but my friends at barnes and noble are letting me know that I can buy his book for 40% off. Uh, no thanks! While I have read books by conservative intellectuals like E.D. Hirsch, Dinesh D'Souza, and Shelby Steele, I've never read a conservative political book. I usually don't even read the "liberal" Presidents or candidates' books. I didn't read the Clintons' books, for instance. I also didn't read Obama's Audacity of Hope, although I did read his memoir about his father. Someone in this group encouraged us to send questions to Bush for some event he's doing. I asked why he waited until after the election to publish his book and why he didn't campaign for Republican candidates the way Clinton did for Democrats. I skimmed an article about him in USA Today where he was talking about campaigning for Jeb to be President. I think it's disgusting that Bush believes that he can lie low for a few years, wait until the corporate media makes the current President look weak and unsuccessful, and then come slithering back out. Some poll that ranked him more popular than Obama must have given him that courage. Shame on all of us if we treat him as if he was as good a President as Clinton, his father, or even Carter, who is generally seen as a failed President. Bush was the worst President in my lifetime (which began during Truman's second term) by far; no one else comes close, not even Nixon, who resigned, or Reagan, who is my second least favorite President after GW. He needs to stay home and paint.
Mary wrote: "I haven't seen the ad on goodreads, Beverly, but my friends at barnes and noble are letting me know that I can buy his book for 40% off. Uh, no thanks! While I have read books by conservative int..."I used to read conservative books just to expand my horizons and understand what I opposed. But since the Right became such a fascist evil force, I boycott their books along with everything else they represent.
Mary wrote: "I haven't seen the ad on goodreads, Beverly, but my friends at barnes and noble are letting me know that I can buy his book for 40% off. Uh, no thanks! While I have read books by conservative int... Shame on all of us if we treat him as if he was as good a President as Clinton, his father, or even Carter, who is generally seen as a failed President. Bush was the worst President in my lifetime (which began during Truman's second term) by far; no one else comes close, not even Nixon, who resigned, or Reagan, ."Lest my comments be misconstrued, let me state emphatically that I agree with your ranking of presidential execrability 100%, Mary. I was just engaging in speculation as to why Beverly might have had that particular ad visited upon her. When I say the contemporary Tea Party might consider "W" inadmissibly "liberal," it's only because I don't think he actually wanted to dismantle the entire government and eliminate Medicare and Social Security. When I say that Obama is, from my perspective, to the right of the traditional "center," it's only because the erstwhile center was galaxies to the left of what currently passes for centrality. By prevailing standards, Obama is very liberal, indeed. By my own standards (which haven't changed in 50 years)... well, Bernie Sanders is still liberal. I might be somewhat to the left of Sanders. But in an imaginary Utopia, I'd love to see him (or Warren) magically elected the next president.
Beverly wrote: "Mary wrote: "I haven't seen the ad on goodreads, Beverly, but my friends at barnes and noble are letting me know that I can buy his book for 40% off. Uh, no thanks! While I have read books by con..."Yes, the prospect of contributing to the coffers of Ann Coulter would impel me to reach for an emesis bowl, so I can't really disagree. Forty-some years ago, I did used to find Buckley diverting (though odious), but I think his were the last books by any conservative intellectual (in most other cases, a flagrant oxymoron) that I voluntarily read.
I have trained my eyes to totally shut out any and all ads on social media including GR. If this ad was there, I didn't see it.
Lisa wrote: "I have trained my eyes to totally shut out any and all ads on social media including GR. If this ad was there, I didn't see it."Neat trick. You'll have to tell us how you do it. Of course, if gr learns the secret, they may find a way to circumvent it. :-)
I too am oblivious to ads and "click bait."
Barbara wrote: "I too am oblivious to ads and "click bait.""I never actually click on "click bait" (knowingly), though Amazon has adopted a habit of showing "featured related products" (linking to other sites) that it's sometimes difficult to distinguish from ordinary products, so I once made that mistake.
Goodreads certainly has the need to generate revenue, but I don't have the money to be susceptible to advertising. Anyway, the site, by promoting discussion of books, inherently advertises them, anyway, so I think Amazon benefits irrespective.
Say, Colleen (slightly OT, pursuant to your update),I didn't think anyone else in the world had managed to make it through Molloy. Those last lines: " ...j'ai écrit: «Il est minuit. La pluie fouette les vitres.» I'll n'était pas minuit. Il ne pleuvait pas." ("...so I wrote, 'It is midnight. The rain lashes the windows.' It wasn't midnight. It wasn't raining.") always stuck in my mind.
Though I know Beckett's self-annihilating intent (no sentence left uncontradicted), currently, they remind me a great deal of American journalism! :-) :-) I can't say it's not midnight, though.
It would take magic for either Warren or Sanders to win, Mark. I love Bernie Sanders because he just says what he thinks, but if he runs, it will be to push the electable candidate farther to the left, kind of like that Representative whose name was something like Kucinich, who ran in 2004 and 2008, or like Sharpton in 2004. My "dark horse" candidate for 2016 is Maryland governor O'Malley because I think we need to hold off on making more history for one election cycle so that these conservative maniacs can recover from having a half-black man and his blacker family in the White House. So that the Tea Party can get over its vapors, we need to elect a really white man, and O'Malley is very fair-skinned. He can have a female Vice President, maybe even a Latina or Asian woman, but if we try to elect a woman after electing a half-black man, the conservatives will lose whatever portions of their minds they have left.I'm not sure where O'Malley fits on the left-right continuum. I first noticed him in 2012 because he was such a good debater. I loved how cool he stayed when he was debating some obnoxious right wingers on "Meet the Press." He was particularly good at going from defense to offense, something Democrats have trouble with. Apparently, he said something stupid on Fox and was dropped as an Obama surrogate, and his speech at the convention, which came after speeches by Michelle and the fired-up black governor of Massachusetts, bombed, but he just looks like a winner to me. I've lately found out that he twice beat several black candidates to become mayor of Baltimore, a predominantly black city, so he certainly can appeal to the most loyal Obama voters and the most loyal Democrats, my people.
It's probably against the rules, but anybody want to bet on whether the tea baggers will shut down the government this year?
If they can blame Obama for it, of course they will.
Beverly wrote: "It's probably against the rules, but anybody want to bet on whether the tea baggers will shut down the government this year?"Barbara wrote: "If they can blame Obama for it, of course they will."
The Tea Party would eagerly shut down the government (and turn off the sun), if they could blame Obama for it, though I think they also might like to shut down the government just for the fun of it, no matter what the allocation of blame. It obviously wouldn't accrue to their political advantage to shut down the government, but rational calculation isn't exactly their strong suit, and they answer to a base of racist, government-hating lunatics. (I don't know whether they actually hate the sun, but they do nurture a vendetta against global warming scientists, so one never knows.)
Mary wrote: "It would take magic for either Warren or Sanders to win, Mark. I love Bernie Sanders because he just says what he thinks, but if he runs, it will be to push the electable candidate farther to the ..."You're right, Mary. It would take more magic than Gandalf, Dumbledore and Willow Rosenberg collectively could manage to muster, but it's a nice fantasy.
... so that these conservative maniacs can recover from having a half-black man and his blacker family in the White House. So that the Tea Party can get over its vapors, we need to elect a really white man, and O'Malley is very fair-skinned...
I don't think there's enough aromatic ammonia in the world to dispel the vapors of conservative maniacs, but I fully agree with your calculus regarding O'Malley, and I like him, too. The Democrats definitely need someone willing to play offense.
I hope he runs because I don't think that Hilary can win. She has too much baggage and I'm sure that the Republicans will bring it up if she does.
They are already throwing out Monica's name, as if it were Hilary's skeleton, or as if it were some big secret that no one knows about. The only ones who care aren't going to vote for her anyway.
Lisa wrote: "I hope he runs because I don't think that Hilary can win. She has too much baggage and I'm sure that the Republicans will bring it up if she does."I'm trying to think of some means whereby *any* Democrat could win in an environment of draconian voter suppression, perverse, topology-violating gerrymandering, flagrant, in-your-face cheating and tampering by Republicans, unlimited corporate and plutocratic spending, and a huge segment of the population rabidly motivated by racism, misogyny, homophobia, gun-worship, and jingoistic bellicosity -- all of these tendencies exacerbated by 24/7 brainwashing by their preferred media outlets. Something like the Romney tape might have an effect, especially if multiple such video-documented revelations could be unearthed prior to the election, but the Republicans would surely counter with faked and manufactured ones, and the usual obfuscation and disinformation.
But Mary, Lisa and Barbara, I think (to my considerable regret, because I think Hillary would make a politically savvy president, even if one parsecs to the right of my own political views) you're all right, and Hillary could never be elected. The forces of misogyny that would be harnessed with a psychotic vengeance are simply too powerful, and liberal women are already powerfully motivated (and yet have been able to do virtually nothing to prevent the ongoing incremental nullification of Roe vs. Wade), so she adds nothing to the equation, in that respect. And conservative women hate her. The hope (if any), is that she might engender a wave of Clinton-era nostalgia (you remember -- when the country hadn't gone to... er, fertilizer -- but most of us here are old enough to remember, and half the prospective electorate might not).
My prescription:
1) the sine qua non would be aggressive countermeasures against voter suppression and electoral nullification between now and 2016, though I don't know how this could be achieved. SCOTUS is owned.
2) Mary's idea: I think O'Malley might actually be viable
3) Massive opportunistic audio and video documentation of every word uttered by a prospective Republican candidate. They will say the horrible things they actually believe; they can't help themselves.
4) Democrats must stop speaking cool, equivocal rationality to evil. Aggressive and graphic depiction of what the Republicans are actually doing is what's needed. They'll wring their hands, of course, but countering bullies with timorous "reasonable" pronouncements has never worked, and it never will. Everybody needs to read The Republican Brain.
Those are great ideas, Mark, and I would add that the next candidate must not run away from this successful President, which is apparently what the Clinton camp is trying to do. Obama expanded the electorate, which is why the Republicans started passing voter suppression laws, destroyed ACORN, and gutted the Voting Rights Act, but those new voters will not support a candidate who disrespects their President. I think it's always a problem when the candidate from the same party doesn't want to be seen with the sitting President. Maybe if Gore hadn't worked so hard to distance himself from the man with whom he worked for eight years, he would have won so decisively in 2000 that the Bush camp couldn't have stolen Florida. McCain would have lost in 2008 anyway once the bottom fell out of the economy and his selection for Vice President started looking really foolish, but the fact that he didn't want to be seen with Bush didn't help him.I wish Hillary could do a kind of Sarah Palin/Donald Trump/Newt Gingrich (before Rachel Maddow shamed him into actually running) fake run. She could fake run until next September, drawing all of the fire while O'Malley or some other viable candidate could quietly gather support. Then just as Fox and all of the conservatives were publishing their anti-Hillary books and producing their documentaries, she could decide she wanted to spend time with her granddaughter.
As quiet as it's kept, Hillary's presence in the race and dominance in the pre-election polls really helped Obama in 2008 because the Republicans were so focused on her that they didn't have time to slime him. Only when he started beating Hillary in the primaries and caucuses did they go after Jeremiah Wright and start looking for other "scandals."
That sounds like good strategy Mary except that Hillary seems to really want to run - unless she's faking it and I haven't caught on.
I can't tell either at this point, Lisa. The fakers make a lot of money giving speeches and selling books, so they have a good incentive to look convincing. But she may not know yet; she may be testing the waters, and I think the beating that the Democrats took might make her decide against running since she and Bill campaigned hard this fall. Their candidates lost. I'm doing what I can by not mentioning her when answering those polls about who should run. I always mention O'Malley first, then Biden (he's even older than Hillary and has never done well in Presidential elections, but I love him because of the way he's treated Obama), and then Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or Amy K, that Senator from Minnesota. At least one of these polls was clearly being conducted by a pro-Hillary group, so I gave them an anyone-but-Hillary response to help convince her to stay home.
I don't think that Elizabeth Warren could win but I hope she decides to run. I think her candidacy could push the eventual nominee further to the left.
I hope to one day see E. Warren as POTUS, but she would have to go back on her words to do so in 2016. She seems far too dedicated and honest to do that, so maybe 2020.Whomever is our candidate, I hope it's a short primary, so more emphasis can be placed on the actual election.
Lisa wrote: "That sounds like good strategy Mary except that Hillary seems to really want to run - unless she's faking it and I haven't caught on."Mary wrote: "I can't tell either at this point, Lisa. The fakers make a lot of money giving speeches and selling books, so they have a good incentive to look convincing. But she may not know yet; she may be t..."
Mary and Lisa,
My take is that you're right on all three points.
1) For Hillary to execute a fake-out would be the most phenomenally intelligent strategy the Democrats (as a party) could possibly devise -- which is why I don't think they'll do it by design, since they've never been pragmatic in this way. But circumstances might actually conspire.
2) I really don't believe that, heretofore, Hillary has even imagined any scenario in which she wouldn't run. But you're right that the midterms may have administered a major shock to her system, and Hillary is pragmatic. If she's 100% convinced she can't possibly win, then she might be moved to withdraw. The more Machiavellian strategy of a fake-out, though, doesn't really sound like her, and I don't think she's actually obsessively driven by the prospect of milking additional income from books. So she'd have to be choosing to stay in with some other, or some additional, motivation.
3) Manipulating the polls to push an O'Malley candidacy is a great idea, but I don't think many people outside of you, Mary (and now, the relatively few readers on this group) will ever think of it. Somebody really ought to be devising a strategy:
i) to keep Hillary in the game as a distraction, and
Ii) to keep O'Malley interested, but not too obviously, and then stage some really aggressive, viral advertising late in the game, when Hillary suddenly withdraws, while simultaneously embarrassing the Republican prospects to the maximum extent possible with audio and video blooper reels of their most egregiously stupid and offensive statements (offensive even to non-wealthy Republicans)
I wish you were our strategist, Mark.
Barbara wrote: "I wish you were our strategist, Mark."Thanks, but I think it unlikely the DCCC will be soliciting advice from anyone here. Which is too bad, actually. I think just the participants in this thread could strategize a win. But I think the behavior of the Democrats will be determined by intraparty politics and an incomprehensible inveterate counterproductive predisposition to buy into toxic Republican narratives (as in the instance, cited by Mary, of their running away from their own president). :(
Lorin wrote: "I hope to one day see E. Warren as POTUS, but she would have to go back on her words to do so in 2016. She seems far too dedicated and honest to do that, so maybe 2020.Whomever is our candidate,..."
Hi, Lorin,
Glad you decided to chime in, here.
I would love to see Warren as POTUS, and I think so would everyone here, so your wishes are probably universally seconded (though if, by some miracle, a Democrat wins in 2016, then he or she would run again in 2020 -- and otherwise, there'll be no country left, so 2024 will have been rendered moot). In any case, the misogyny-mobilization potential seems insuperable, even for Hillary, in 2016, so Warren would be even less viable. Too bad we really can't conscript Gandalf, et. al., per an earlier post. Lacking better strategists, I'm fearful that the only thing left for our side would be thaumaturgy.
I'm not so sure that the Democratic strategists don't listen to our advice, Mark. I'm still bitter that the Kerry-Edwards campaign ignored some of my advice for attacking Bush-Cheney, but when the Tea Party jerks were going on and on about taking their country back, I wrote several comments to strategists about how we weren't going back but going forward, and I noticed that became the 2012 Democratic motto. I'm sure I'm not the only "punny" Democrat who saw the obvious verbal smack down potential of the conservatives' stupid remarks, but I took some credit for that slogan. I also noticed that O'Malley appeared on "Meet the Press" quite a bit after I praised him in a comment to then DNC chair Wasserman-Schulz or whoever was sending me e-mails under her name. If they're going to fill my e-mail inboxes with requests for donations, I'm going to fill theirs with advice. It's okay if they don't take my advice or even read it since I never send money through the Internet.
From the folks who brought you genocidal avarice (just when you thought you were going to be able to refill your prescriptions), yet another killing strike:http://mainenewsonline.com/content/14...
Mary wrote: "I'm not so sure that the Democratic strategists don't listen to our advice, Mark. I'm still bitter that the Kerry-Edwards campaign ignored some of my advice for attacking Bush-Cheney, but when the..."That's encouraging, Mary, and kudos on your efforts to fill the inboxes of Democratic strategists. If there's any evidence that they may be influenced by unsolicited input from politically impassioned (and, in my case, cranky) retired professors, then you may be sure that you're not the only one who'll be dispatching tons of missives. :-)
One organization, I think it's the one run by Howard Dean's brother, listed the results of their poll. Hillary came in third behind Warren and Sanders. My dark horse, O'Malley, didn't make the top five. Biden was number 5 at 2%, and speaking of dark horses, somebody who I think is more of an intellectual, talking head was at 3%. I've forgotten his name, but his face was very familiar. However, some members of the media are pushing the Hillary-has-it-in-the-bag argument pretty hard. I saw Chris Matthews on Bill Maher's show last night, and he was saying that Obama's action on immigration would help Hillary in 2016 as if she already had the nomination. Didn't they learn anything from 2008?
Mary wrote: "One organization, I think it's the one run by Howard Dean's brother, listed the results of their poll. Hillary came in third behind Warren and Sanders. My dark horse, O'Malley, didn't make the to..."I don't know about O'Malley's affiliations, but I like him and I think he's viable. I love Sanders and Warren, but I can't imagine a scenario in which either of them wouldn't be decimated. I guess my thought, though, apropos of Chris Matthews (for all that he's a liberal), is that he's part of the power elite Bohemian Grove cult crowd, so I'd expect him to push hard for their preselected candidate, whatever they intended her role to be (in this instance, probably to lose)...
I think we have to take these polls with a few grains of salt. Only the ideologues would vote in it and I don't think it's a way of choosing a candidate who can win in a general election. At the same time, I hope that Hillary isn't the candidate. I think that she's become too much of a hawk and besides that, I don't think that she can win an election anyway with all her baggage.
Lisa wrote: "I think we have to take these polls with a few grains of salt. Only the ideologues would vote in it and I don't think it's a way of choosing a candidate who can win in a general election. At the sa..."You're right, Lisa, about the ideological skew factor in polls. (Though I think serious pollsters attempt to correct for it, I really don't see how it would be feasible, even in principle, without some fairly arbitrary assumptions about the characteristics of a population willing or eager to be sampled, relative to the broader population ostensibly represented.) So I'm all for a healthy dose of sodium chloride :-) , but I think, in any case, that all or most of the posters on this thread would agree that:
1) Hillary is "too hawkish," and that she wouldn't be our ideal choice for a Democratic candidate (though she would be immeasurably preferable to any Republican as president).
2) She can't win.
3) For partly inscrutable (though easily "positable") reasons, immense forces are being marshalled to make her the perceived ineluctable choice. If this were in service of Mary's "fake-out" scenario, I think it would be a really good thing, but I actually doubt that Democratic strategists wield that much real-world clout, or that much strategic finesse. If it were in service of a pre-planned Republican win, then I'd find that scenario much more credible.
I still like Mary's plan, though (even, mutatis mutandis, with another plausibly viable candidate). To win this one, the Democratic strategists are going to need some chess or go grandmasters. Hitherto, they seem barely to have played an incompetent game of tic-tac-toe. (Which does beg the question of whether the strategists "permitted to act in play" aren't, themselves, in service of "higher powers" -- by which, I certainly do NOT mean a deity. I don't know how people like Warren or Sanders even manage to exist, because I generally think the price of admission to the game is a willingness to take marching orders -- but there may be "clashing behemoths" at the top, and they may enjoy protection from some of the less malignant ones.)
[Your dementedly ultra-skeptical Thought for the Day. :-)]
You're right about those polls, Lisa. Dean's group is very liberal. In fact, one report on the poll described it as a liberal group. But I think the Democrats have moved to the left since the Clintons were in power. We're actually calling ourselves liberal again, and the Republican brand is the one that's toxic. They are on the wrong side of the wedge issues now--gay marriage, right to choose, minimum wage, maybe even drugs--so the triangulating Democrats are not so impressive. We've also seen that another Democrat could win, even beat the Clintons, so the whole "only Clintons can beat the Republicans" and "only Clintons can win two terms" story doesn't work anymore, especially after their big loss in this last election. And Mark is right that we don't like hawkish Democrats. We don't have to prove that we are tough. Obama got Osama. And Bush's two stupid wars soured the whole country on war. Mark, you're even more paranoid than I am. But I agree that the Warren/Sanders types will never make it because they are enemies of the corporations. The good news, though, is they don't look like the type who could be taken down by a juicy sex scandal. The media probably will just try to accuse them of being crazy. I still have my eye on O'Malley as the where-did-he-come-from Clinton/Carter candidate who can sneak in while these other people are sucking up all of the media attention and take the prize. Let's hope he doesn't have any mistresses or crazy friends/associates.
Maybe the media is making it appear that Clinton is the inevitable Democratic candidate because they know she would lose the election. It's all a Republican plot. I hope that I don't sound too paranoid saying that but I'm still in recovery since the midterm election.
We liberals have a right to be paranoid. While the conservatives blabber about the liberal "lamestream" media, the corporate media supports conservatives and attacks liberals. Now they're saying that Obama was taking a shot at Hillary yesterday when he said on the ABC Sunday show that voters want that new car smell, and he has lots of miles and dinks. He said that he would support Hillary and any other candidates, and George S. acted as if it was a dig because Obama suggested there would be other candidates. He also said she was his friend, which is probably not completely true. I hope he was taking a shot at the Clintons because they and their allies certainly took shots at him during the lead up to the election, and those shots (like Grimes') backfired.
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As for Rahm Emanuel and the schools, he's been arrogant and heavy handed. He has an antagonist relationship with the Pres. of the Teachers' Union. By the way, she's black. Last year, Rahm Emanuel closed 50 Chicago public schools due to under population. They were mostly all schools in the low-income black neighborhoods. There was a hew and a cry against this move but Rahm didn't change his mind. I don't think that this city issue was a major factor in why Quinn lost the election. Quinn was generally regarded as a well-meaning guy who wasn't up to the job of governor. He took over as governor after Rod Blogoyavich (sp?) went to prison.