Posted: May 23, 2016 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads | Tags: Bill Clinton, David Brock, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Newt Gingrich, political ads, political attacks, Roger Stone |
Good Afternoon!
It’s been a long few days for me culminating with spending the morning at the LASPCA trying to spring my friend’s runaway dog. Did I mention it took three hours while I had to look at about 10 cute kittens that definitely need a home ASAP giving me those big eyes ? So, I’m late with everything, tired, and the last thing I need is to crack a virtual newspaper and read about crazy. However, we still have two crazies in the race, so it’s crazzyyy Monday!!!
We knew the Trump ads against Clinton would be bad but we’re beginning to see exactly how bad they will be. I think most newspaper Tabloids have less sensation and more facts to be perfectly honest. Is this a clickbait headline or what? Alex Jones has taken over candidate Trump’s policies and their oppo research. From TPM: “New Trump Video Mixes Bill Clinton Rape Allegation, Hillary Clinton Laughing.”
Donald Trump released a new Instagram video on Monday featuring audio from interviews with women who’ve accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault. The accompanying text asks if Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton is “really protecting women.”
As a photo of Bill Clinton comes into focus against a black-and-white photo of the White House, a voice can be heard saying “I was very nervous.”
That voice belongs to former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, explaining her concern about divulging her affair with the President to a grand jury.
The next voice says “No woman should be subjected to it. It was an assault.” That’s Kathleen Wiley, a former White House volunteer who alleged that Clinton groped her in the hallway of the White House in 1993, speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in 2007.
The last bit of audio is taken from an infamous 1999 NBC Dateline interview with Juanita Broaddrick, a former nursing home administrator who accused Clinton of raping her in 1978. A tearful Broaddrick can be heard saying that he “started to bite my top lip and I tried to pull away from him.”
Clinton denied the assault on Willey in a 1998 deposition and has also denied Broaddrick’s rape allegation, which surfaced at the time of congressional impeachment proceedings over his affair with Lewinsky.
Trump’s video clip ends with a shot of Hillary and Bill Clinton together. While audio of Hillary Clinton laughing plays, the words “Here we go again” appear on the screen.
It’s the second time in two weeks that Trump has brought up past sexual assault allegations against Bill Clinton. He has called Hillary Clinton a “nasty, mean enabler” of her husband’s alleged affairs.
We’re about to hit through the boundaries of horrific misogyny
straight into new, uncharted territory. This is simply on the internet now, but I can only imagine what he’ll eventually try on other forms of media. This is really appalling.
And this on top of crazy Bernie Sanders and his delusional dead-enders!
There are also the usual proxies for the two campaigns. I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to read this but you might want to look at the NYT’s profiles of Roger Stone (Trump) and David Brock (Clinton). It’s about some of their behind the scene work for the campaigns.
One takes a pint-size dog named Toby almost everywhere, smokes electronic cigarettes and wears his silver hair in a flowing pompadour.
The other has a portrait of Richard M. Nixon tattooed on his back, boasts that he owns more shoes than Imelda Marcos and traffics in conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination.
The 2016 election, filled with ugly insults, whispered innuendo and sordid character attacks, features two central antagonists known for their colorful traits and devotion to the dark arts of politics: David Brock and Roger J. Stone Jr.
Each has a passion for his side — Mr. Brock for Hillary Clinton and Mr. Stone for Donald J. Trump — and a zeal for attacking critics of his candidate. Their intensity and pugnacity make them either perfect villains or misunderstood masterminds, depending on your point of view.
On the wall of Mr. Stone’s office in South Florida, which has an undisclosed address because of the death threats he said he had received, hangs a “Spy vs. Spy” cartoon, which young staff members titled “Brock-Stone” after the two battling operatives.
“The dynamic between the two of them is very interesting,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist who knows both men. “This will be a battle about who’s tougher.”
Politics has always attracted flamboyant characters with a sometimes-reckless devotion to a cause, and both these men seem to enjoy their outsize images.
Mr. Brock, 53, divides his time between Washington and the West Village in Manhattan, throwing lively salons and wooing liberal donors on both coasts, often accompanied by Toby, his schnoodle — a schnauzer-poodle mix.
We frequently read our friend’s at Brock financed pro-Hillary blog Blue Nation Review. The NYT article has some interesting stories on him and the purpose of his pro-Hillary PAC.
Mr. Brock now runs Correct the Record, a “super PAC” that coordinates with the Clinton campaign to defend Mrs. Clinton, and American Bridge, a related group that digs up opposition research to defeat Mr. Trump. (Enough to “knock Trump Tower down to the subbasement,” as Mr. Brock put it in remarks to liberal donors, according to Politico.)
His mission now will largely be to get inside Mr. Stone’s complicated head to anticipate, and stay ahead of, Mr. Trump’s attacks. Mrs. Clinton’s allies have vehemently denied that she was involved in silencing Mr. Clinton’s accusers, but Mr. Trump will continue to push that assertion as the two candidates battle for the support of women voters.
Mr. Stone acknowledged that Mr. Brock’s operation has significantly more resources, but he said the traditional tactic of dismissing these accusations as sordid rumors could backfire. “Brock is calling us conspiracy theorists and trying to make us all sound kooky,” he said. “The only people that scares away are the elites.”
Mr. Brock’s group Media Matters for America has taken direct aim at Mr. Stone, labeling him “the underbelly of the Trump machine” and assembling an encyclopedia on his tactics, including his involvement in a National Enquirer article that accused Senator Ted Cruz’s father of associating with Lee Harvey Oswald before President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Mr. Stone calls Media Matters part of “the Clinton slime machine.”
Both men operate outside the official campaigns, though Mr. Brock directly coordinates with the Clinton campaign through Correct the Record. Mr. Stone said he had “no formal or informal role” within the Trump campaign, but he is close to Mr. Trump and has had a major influence on strategy.
And both have taken risky moves that have created drama and tensions within the campaigns they are ostensibly helping.
We probably are experience some Nixonian election tactics this year. So, I am going to use Media Matters as the go to for this story on the potential of 
Newt Gingrich showing up as Trump’s VP. I didn’t want to go directly to the National Review but you can if you’d like! It’s amazing to me that what looks like a slate of serial adulterers and cheaters is going after Hillary on her husband. The optics on that alone are so bad as to make your eyeballs peel. It can’t be to attract women. It must be a full throttle all speed ahead to grab white men’s votes.
Fox News figures are praising network contributor Newt Gingrich as a “great choice” for Donald Trump’s running mate. They have touted Gingrich — the first speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives to be punished by the House for ethics violations — as “a genius,” “a conservative with bona fides,” and someone who would “bring tremendous stability, tremendous gravitas, incredible intellect,” and “judgment experience.”
Trump Is Considering Gingrich As His Running Mate
Bloomberg: Trump Has Discussed Gingrich As His VP. Bloomberg reported that “Trump has discussed in recent days the possibility of selecting former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich as his running mate, according to people familiar with the talks.” [Bloomberg, 5/11/16]
Trump: Gingrich Is “Absolutely” On His Short List For VP. The Fox News morning show Fox & Friendsasked Trump if Gingrich was on his short list for vice president. Trump responded: “Absolutely. I’ll say yes, because he’s been such a supporter. I mean, anybody that supports me is on the shortlist as far as I’m concerned.” [The Hill, 5/20/16]
Gingrich Has Suggested He Would Accept The VP Slot. Gingrich stated during a Fox News interview that he would be “very hard-pressed not to say ‘yes’” if offered the spot. [The Huffington Post, 5/16/16]
Trump Aide: Staffers Were Informed Gingrich “Will Have His Hand In Every Major Policy Effort.”National Review reported of “Gingrich’s ascent to Trump’s inner circle”:
Gingrich’s influence within Trump World is widespread. Inside Trump’s newly established campaign offices in Washington, D.C., his fingerprints are everywhere. “Right from the minute I joined we were told that Newt will have his hand in every major policy effort,” says one Trump aide. “So one of the things I do when I’m researching or writing anything, in addition to looking at what Trump has said about anything, I look at what Newt has said.”
Gingrich’s ascent to Trump’s inner circle — and potentially to the vice presidency — marks a reversal of fortune for the speaker, who in recent years has fallen out of favor with party elites over his vocal criticisms of the Iraq War and Paul Ryan’s proposal to reform Medicare. On both issues, the views that irked GOP insiders were squarely in line with the unorthodox positions Trump has espoused on the campaign trail. [National Review, 5/23/16]
So, it will be ugly if it’s the doughboys but it’s an easy take down on the sexcapades at least. I still can’t believe any woman would find Newt’s history 
with women any more appealing than Trump’s. Still, Trump’s campaign insists they will be aggressive in their ads against Hillary,
A top strategist for the Republican National Committee said Sunday on conservative talk radio that presumptive nominee Donald Trump has made clear he wants to launch “aggressive” attacks on Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“Republicans have been accused in the past, and some degree rightfully so, of not tearing the bark off of our opponents, and this year Donald Trump has made it very clear we are going to be aggressive” to get a Republican in the White House, Sean Spicer RNC chief strategist and spokesman, said.
“We’ve been at it for four years going through her record,” Spicer also said, as quoted by Breitbart. “This idea that people know who she is and that they’ve seen everything is just ridiculous.”
Spicer, speaking with Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM radio, added the party has only “scratched the surface” with Clinton.
I never understand the appeal of these kinds of attacks. They really turn me off. It’s one of the reasons I’m ready to do just about anything within the legal boundaries of the law to see that Bernie Sanders goes back to the Vermont outback, never to be heard from again. Why do all the remaining dudes in this race all represent the angry white male, women-hating prototype? Are there really that many of them left out there?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: May 17, 2016 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, open thread, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Henri Matisse, Hillary Clinton, Kentucky primary, Oregon primary |
Good Afternoon!!
Today there are Democratic primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. Both actually look pretty good for Hillary. She has spent quite a bit of time in Kentucky and has spent much more than Bernie on advertising there. His donations seem to have dried up, and it’s questionable whether he’ll even be able to buy TV ads in California and New Jersey. Hillary will be the nominee either way, but it would be nice if she won one or both of today’s primaries.
The Lexington Herald Leader endorse Hillary on May 5: Clinton best choice for Ky. Democrats.
Hillary Clinton is the most-qualified person running for president of the United States and has demonstrated the deepest understanding of how to address the challenges facing Kentucky. Kentucky Democrats should vote for her in the May 17 primary.
The difference between Clinton and her leading opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, was evident in their appearances this week in Kentucky. Sanders appeared in Lexington and Louisville, giving his standard stump speech to large and enthusiastic crowds. Clinton’s two-day tour of Appalachia included a session in Ashland where she talked with about 25 people for two hours about the region’s problems and promise. Two other candidates on the ballot have not been active in the race.
Clinton, who has served as secretary of state and in the Senate representing New York, in addition to her eight years as first lady during her husband Bill Clinton’s presidency, has an impressive resume and a thorough knowledge of both this country and its place in the world. She’s smart, extremely knowledgeable, thoughtful and — after decades of withstanding virtually every possible attack — unflappable. In a word, she’s presidential.
Read the rest at the link. Former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear also endorsed Hillary yesterday. We won’t know the results until tonight–and I don’t think anyone in the media knows what will happen either. FiveThirtyEither hasn’t made projections for either state. There is an article by Harry Enten up on the site though: What To Expect In The Democratic Primaries In Kentucky And Oregon.
Kentucky doesn’t line up particularly well for either candidate demographically. My colleague Nate Silver’s demographic model, released in late April, projects that Clinton will win the state by about 2 percentage points. Why? In the last general election with an exit poll in every state (2008), whites made up about 75 percent of Barack Obama voters in Kentucky. That’s good — but not great — news for Sanders, who has done better with white voters than nonwhite voters. Blacks, meanwhile, made up about 25 percent. What could turn the tide for Clinton is that Kentucky is aclosed primary, which means only registered Democrats can vote. Sanders has done better among unaffiliated voters in open primaries. There’s been limited polling in Kentucky, but the last poll released there (in early March) had Clinton ahead by 5 percentage points.
Oregon is different. Nate’s demographic model gives Sanders an edge of about 15 percentage points. That’s because whites made up about 90 percent of Obama voters in the 2008 general election. Keep in mind too that Sanders won next door in the Washington caucuses in March by about 45 percentage points. Clinton is expected to do better in Oregon because, unlike Washington, Oregon is a primary and is closed to non-Democrats. I should note that the only two polls taken this year, including one taken this month, have shown Clinton ahead, so it’s possible that she’ll pull it out.
As Enten notes, Sanders will not gain any ground on Clinton even if he wins one or more of the two primaries.
I will share with you that Al Giordano is projecting that Hillary will win in both states. He’s pretty sure she’ll take Kentucky because of the African American vote; and he believes she could win Oregon because as many as 50% of the votes have already been made by mail. In early voting, Hillary is way ahead of Bernie. And remember, both Kentucky and Oregon have closed primaries, so Bernie’s treasured independents can’t vote.
From Politico: Can Hillary flip the script in Oregon and Kentucky?
Sanders victories are hardly inevitable in either state, and if Clinton were able to win both of them, she would finally put to rest the notion that her fellow Democrats are resistant to her candidacy, even if many seem resigned to having her as their nominee.
Polling in both races has been scant, and neither state allows independent voters to participate in the primary — a significant challenge for Sanders, who has struggled to win primaries that are limited to registered Democrats.
Still, Oregon’s demographics track closely with those of states where Sanders has prevailed. The Vermont senator has dominated Clinton in contests in nearby states with similar features: overwhelmingly white and very liberal with active grass-roots supporters.
“I have certainly been expecting — continue to expect — her to lose,” the chief strategist for one of the state’s top elected Democrats backing Clinton said. “I would have told you that I thought she was going to lose very badly. I still think she’ll lose badly.”
The strategist added that Oregon is “prime territory for Bernie demographically, all white. He’s been drawing big crowds of young people and all that.”
We’ll find out tonight.
In Bernie Sanders news, the Nevada Democratic party has filed an official complaint with the DNC about the behavior of his supporters at the Nevada Democratic Convention.
A few more links on the Nevada chaos:
The Nevada Dems on Medium: The Facts about the Nevada Democratic State Convention on Saturday.
John Ralston: The sour grapes revolution that rocked the Paris Hotel.
The New York Times: From Bernie Sanders Supporters, Death Threats Over Delegates.
As you have probably heard, the great Al Giordano has officially announced that if Bernie supporters disrupt the convention, thus making it more difficult for Hillary to defeat Donald Trump, Al will move back to Vermont and run against Bernie in the Senate primary in 2018.
Bernie Sanders is campaigning in Puerto Rico today, and he’s apparently in a foul mood.
This man does not have the temperament to be President–not by a long shot.
In other news, we still have a racist, xenophobic, misogynistic wanna-be dictator running on the Republican side. A few interesting reads on Trump:
David Cay Johnston at The National Memo: Trump Used His Aliases For Much More — And Worse — Than Gossip.
What we can show is that when Donald Trump made deceptive phone calls over decades — posing as a Trump Organization vice president named “John Miller” or “John Barron” — he was not always puffing up his reputation as a philandering ladies’ man. In his fictional identities, Trump could also be quite threatening, as revealed in the brief clip below from Trump: What’s The Deal? — a documentary film that he successfully suppressed for 25 years with threats of litigation.
The story erupted Thursday when The Washington Post put online a recording of Trump posing as “John Miller,” in a 1991 interview with People magazine reporter Sue Carswell. The fictitious “Miller” described himself as a newly hired Trump Organization publicist for the company boss….
Trump also used the name John Barron or Baron (he later named his son Baron).
“John Barron” didn’t just puff Trump’s sexual boasting in the press. “Barron” was also menacing, as revealed in the [a] film clip [from the documentary] about his abuse of Polish immigrant construction workers – and the attorney who tried to help them.
Trump: What’s The Deal recounts a wide variety of Trump lies, exaggerations, and manipulations, but the misconduct of greatest interest to voters may be his threatening litigation in a scheme to deny payment to about 200 illegal Polish immigrants tearing down the old Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue (an act of architectural vandalism). Many of the men lacked hardhats or face masks, used sledge hammers rather than power tools, had to pull out live electric wires with their bare hands, in a building laced with asbestos — all in blatant violation of worker safety laws.
A lawyer trying to get the workers paid the meager $4 to $6 per hour that Trump owed them received a bullying telephone call from one “John Barron,” as recounted in the film:
Narrator: Chapter Six. [Voiceover various images of Trump Tower and Trump]
Threaten the lawyer that the Polish illegals hired after your cheap contractor defaults on paying them. Make sure that the threats are untraceable, in case the guy isn’t scared off.
Interview On Camera: John Szabo (lawyer for Polish workers):
“Mr. Barron had told me in the one telephone conversation that I had with him, that Donald Trump was upset because I was ruining his credit, reputation by filing the mechanics liens [legal action intended to enforce payment]. And Mr. Trump was thinking of filing a personal lawsuit against me for $100 million for defaming his, uh…reputation.”
Narrator: It turned out that Mr. Barron was Donald Trump’s favorite alias.
When this was revealed Trump said, “What of it? Ernest Hemingway used a pen name, didn’t he?”
You can now view the entire 80-minute documentary, which is a superb examination of Trump’s mendacity and manipulation of journalists and politicians. It’s available for $9.99 on iTunes.
Here’s a sobering piece from Simon Johnson at Reuters: Commentary: Win or lose, Trump could cause a recession.
Trump contends he can run Washington far better by treating the federal government like one of his companies. He has a very particular style as a real-estate developer, and his general approach to business could indeed be applied to fiscal and monetary policy. Any way that you look at what Trump is inclined to do, however, the result could lead to unprecedented disaster on a global scale.
Trump has already demonstrated a great ability to make the kinds of inconsistent comments that, — if coming from the mouth of a president — would scare investors, create a great deal of uncertainty, push up interest rates, lower employment, drive down stock market prices and cause the bottom to fall out of the value of other assets.
This kind of destabilization wouldn’t just have negative effects on investor and consumer confidence in the United States. It would spread rapidly around the world and drive up interest rates, bankrupt private-sector companies and plunge countries into a downward default-recession spiral. U.S. exports would naturally crater in this scenario because U.S. allies and trading partners would be in deep crisis and could not afford to buy American products.
The Trump ripple effect would really be a devastating global tidal wave of rising interest rates….
On debt, Trump believes the more the better. His companies issue a great deal of debt because, in the downside scenario, developers like Trump can find ways to pay less than the face value of what is owed. He recently said this approach is an opportunity the U.S. Treasury is losing out on.
The U.S. government, however, is not a speculative real-estate company. Alexander Hamilton realized, at the very start of the nation that having the federal government pay its debts in full, as well as assuming the states’ debts, was of fundamental importance. This was crucial not just for public finance but also for the ability of the private credit markets to operate in a reasonable fashion. And this is what Washington has done for more than 200 years.
“Risk-free debt” is how U.S. debt is described in the world of finance. Once you introduce default risk into those calculations, interest rates would spike for both the government and the private sector.
The paintings in this post are by Henri Matisse, of course.
I won’t be around tonight until late, but if we need another post, Dakinikat will post a live blog to discuss the primary results. What stories are you following today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: May 12, 2016 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Dan McAdams, Donald Trump, Erik Erikson, generativity, Hillary Clinton, life stories, love and kindness, narrative research, personality psychology |
Good Morning!!
Hillary Clinton has been making “love and kindness” a theme of her campaign for President of the U.S. In my opinion, that is not only an inspiring message, but it is also an interesting and exciting one for a political campaign.
To me, this slogan is much more inspiring than “hope and change.” Love and kindness are about reaching out to others who are in distress and helping them. It signals caring about people and relationships. But I think “love and kindness” appeals more to women than men.
And why not? After all, we’ve had more than two centuries as a country led by male presidents. Isn’t it about time that the citizens who make up the majority of the electorate had the opportunity to vote for a woman to hold the highest office in the land?
I’ve mentioned before that my focus in graduate school was on language development and specifically on the development and function of narratives across the lifespan and how they affect personality. One of the approaches that my mentor emphasized was pioneered by Dan McAdams, a professor of psychology and presently chair of the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University.
McAdams studied the life stories of men and women and found significant differences in the ways males and females view the world and their lives. He referred to this dichotomy as “agency and communion.” Males tend to be more focused on agency, “getting ahead” and Females tend to be more interested in communion, “getting along.” In other words women are more interested in relationships than in advancing themselves and dominating others.
Of course each individual personality contains both of these characteristics. Interestingly, communion tends to increase with age in males and older women often show more agency in their personalities. This is a generalization, but there is definitely a statistically significant difference in these personality characteristics in the life stories of men and women. Whether it’s based on nature or nurture–personality is a combination of both–females and males tend to see the world and their own lives in differing ways.
Historically, personality psychologists have tried to diagram personality traits using the “interpersonal circumplex” concept. Here’s a diagram using agency and communion:
The idea is to demonstrate the various personality trait combinations that make people unique and at the same time similar to each other according to other characteristics like gender and age.
McAdams also incorporated Erik Erikson’s personality theories into his work. If you took Psychology 101, you know about Erikson’s theory of lifespan development. He argued that as people go through life, they pass through eight stages. Here’s Erickson’s final diagram of the stages he observed in people he studied:
I won’t go into this too deeply, but the ages listed on the diagram are fluid. I don’t think 65 is really “old age” anymore. McAdams has focuses quite a bit of his research on Erikson’s concept of Generativity. He has found that even very young children can experience generativity. What we’re talking about here is basically empathy for the feelings of others and taking action to reach out to and help other people.
Hillary is currently in the Generativity stage. In terms of her personality and behavior, she is nowhere near old age. She demonstrates generativity in the way she obviously cares about others and wants to help them. She especially cares about children and young people. During the campaign, she has reached out to the mayor and the people of Flint, Michigan and to mothers of young black men who were murdered. When young people have derided her at town hall meetings, she has famously said to them (paraphrasing) “You don’t have to be for me, but I will be for you.” Can you imagine Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump being capable of that kind of selflessness?
My point is that we are seeing these basic personality differences based on psychological research being clearly demonstrated in the current presidential campaign. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are focused on themselves as leaders of “movements” that are all about them and what they want to do. Hillary Clinton also shows a great deal of agency, of course; but the focus of her campaign has been on what she wants to do for other people and for her country as a whole. I personally find this inspiring and it makes me feel very enthusiastic about voting for Hillary.
Unfortunately, many of the people in our terrible media think “love and kindness” and caring for others are stupid, corny ideas and they mostly discount what Hillary is saying and doing and project their own ideas about “the Clintons” onto her. No matter how hard she tries, no matter how often she speaks in such positive ways about the future of our country, the media in general doesn’t believe her or care a bit about her desire to do good.
So that’s where we are today. We always knew that electing a woman president would be hard–much harder than electing a black man. Goddess only knows how long it could take to elect a black woman. But we are making progress, and if Hillary wins the presidency, we will very likely see both gradual and sudden changes in our national consciousness.
Women and people of color have learned that progress is slow; change doesn’t happen overnight, as Bernie Sanders wishes it would. But Sanders is irrelevant now; we must focus on helping Hillary defeat Donald Trump. The possibility that this ignorant, dangerous man could become president should motivate both Democrats and Republicans to work as hard as they can to defeat him.
Women, people of color, and other marginalized citizens like LGBT and disabled people can understand Hillary’s message better than the the privileged white men who presently control most of the levers of power in our country. We are the ones who will help Hillary save the country from Donald Trump. Privileged white men have a choice: they can join us or they can remain irrelevant.
Now a few reads to check out:
This piece by Charlies Pierce made me very angry yesterday, but today I see Pierce in the context of many white male journalists who simply don’t understand that white males and what excites them will not decide the 2016 election. The election will be decided by women and people of color.
I Am Not Convinced Hillary Clinton Is the Right Candidate to Take on Trump.
Let us stipulate a few things at the start. Hillary Rodham Clinton is still odds-on to be the next president of the United States. Only George H.W. Bush among modern presidents had anything close to her CV, and he never was a senator from a major state. She has been the victim of incredible abuse and the subject of fantastical lies ever since she first stepped onto the public stage in Arkansas. She is as tough and durable a political figure as any we’ve seen with the possible exception of the guy she married and the guy that has the job now. Electing a woman to be president of the United States is a genuinely big honking historic deal. Electing this particular woman president of the United States is the only sane and plausible choice available….
I would also stipulate the following—as a presidential candidate, as a seeker of votes, as an applicant for the world’s most powerful temp position, for the second time in a row, she’s proving to be something of a mediocrity….
HRC is a plodder. There’s nothing wrong with that. Many great politicians have been plodders; it can be argued that—his ability to galvanize an audience aside—the current president is something of a plodder. What is what he memorably called “the hard, necessary work of self-government” in his acceptance speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, if not an appeal for people to understand that progress does not come like thunderclaps and lightning. But the problem, as I see it, anyway, is the problem of horses-for-courses. A pure plodder is not the best candidate to put in a race against someone who is completely unmoored from consequence, who makes up policy positions on the fly, an improv act for whom the truth is whatever he decides to say next. Against this, HRC can look slow and stolid.
Read the rest at the link if you wish. In my opinion, what Charles Pierce thinks about Hillary is irrelevant. Older white men like him are not the voters who will elect her. I hope he decides to convince other men like him to support her too, but we can probably do without a lot of them. We are the future; they can join us or continue to be irrelevant.
Melissa McEwan at Blue Nation Review: When I Was a Little Girl I Memorized a List of Male Presidents.
When I was in fifth grade, I had to memorize the list of US presidents. At that time, there were 40 of them. To help me remember them, I looked at a series of their portraits contained in my parents’ set of encyclopedias, as I sat cross-legged on the orange shag carpeting of our living room while a re-run of “Barney Miller” played on the telly.
To this day, I can conjure the cross stare of Millard Fillmore and the Ichabodian visage of William Henry Harrison.
There was something about all those faces, first rendered in oil and then reprinted for my perusal, that made me ask my teacher how a person became president.
Something about the way I asked made her think I was asking what I might do if I wanted to be president someday. That was not what I was asking. I am criminally shy and despise being the center of attention; a position as visible as the presidency would be my worst nightmare. But I also wasn’t really asking what it took to become president, either.
I was asking, without saying it, what it would take—was it even possible—for a woman to be president.
Please read the rest–it’s great. I went through the same thing as a young girl–and I’m a lot older than McEwan. I wondered why women were rarely doctors or college professors or lawyers or much of anything other than schoolteachers, nurses, or secretaries. And even women who did those jobs were looked down on–they should have gotten married, had children, and spent their days cleaning house and cooking. Today we are on the cusp of electing a woman president!
Peter Daou at Blue Nation Review: Hillary’s Long Game Is Why Bernie and Trump Can’t Defeat Her. Daou says he observed Hillary’s campaign as similar to a game of chess.
From Hillary’s admirers we hear about Hillary’s discipline, resilience, compassion, experience and knowledge. From her detractors, we hear she is robotic, calculating, and dishonest.
What we rarely hear about from either side is her uncanny ability to play the long game, to see through the fog of news cycles, to hear through the cacophony of opinions, and to make decisions that are many steps ahead of her opponents.
Hillary understands that Bernie Sanders will win more races on his way to defeat, that Trump will keep attacking her marriage on his way to defeat, that the media will jump at the catnip, that pundits will make grave prognostications, that social media will light up with hourly trends.
What Hillary also knows is that her voters are profoundly invested in her campaign and that their support gives her the capacity to withstand intense attacks and weather the most turbulent news cycles.
She is playing the long game, knowing that media hype is just that: hype.
What seems like an earth-shattering issue today is a hazy memory tomorrow. What feels like a crushing defeat one night is forgotten the next. What seems like an insurmountable obstacle on the road ahead is quickly lost in the rear view mirror.
I loved that.
Finally, two pieces about Bernie Sanders that demonstrate where he falls on the agency-communion axis:
David Wade at Politico: Bernie Sanders, the Zombie Candidate. It’s already over, and now he’s just causing havoc. I’ve seen firsthand how much damage this kind of candidacy can do.
When he first decided to run for president, Bernie Sanders had a goal in mind: to start a political revolution by getting big money out of politics.
If he wants to do it—if Sanders wants to build a lasting movement to fight money’s outsize influence—he has to close one door to open another. The transition from contender to gracious supporter of the nominee isn’t easy for any presidential candidate, but he needs to make it, and soon.
We already know Sanders isn’t going to win the Democratic Party’s nomination; Hillary Clinton has amassed more than 92 percent of the delegates needed to secure the nomination, and she’ll easily pick up the rest. So right now, Sanders’ campaign is the walking dead: a zombie. And having worked for John Kerry during the slugfest of the 2004 primaries, I’ve seen up close how much damage this sort of prolonged “zombie” candidacy can inflict on the eventual nominee—and what’s ultimately at stake for the country.
I don’t claim that the dragged-out primary made the difference in November 2004; the race came down to the wire, and big forces—including post-9/11 anxiety and “Swift Boat” smears—loomed large. But in presidential campaigns, the one resource that’s never renewable is time. Zombie candidates can’t win the nomination, but they squander vast amounts of time and slowly chip away at the prohibitive front-runner. Some of the damage is obvious—the endless series of public dents in the candidate’s reputation; some are subtle, noticeable in ways that perhaps only political operatives can appreciate.
Read more at the link.
Jon Reinish at The Observer: Bernie Sanders Only Cares About Bernie Sanders.
Each election has what become its accepted narratives: themes that, over time, gel into what are considered reliable facts that are no longer vetted or questioned. As the Democratic campaign finally wraps up, it’s time to put two persistent ones to bed: Hillary Clinton is unpopular and limping to a finish, and Bernie Sanders is a progressive from way outside the system.
Neither could be farther from the truth….let’s look at the overall race and break it down by the numbers: Hillary Clinton is ahead of her primary opponent by over three million votes. In the Democratic primary, she’s still ahead by about 300 pledged delegates. America knows her. Which is probably in no small part why she’s so far ahead and why the country is saying a resounding yes to her in such massive numbers.
Call it what you want, but acknowledge she’s ahead.
It’s simply inaccurate to say that a campaign putting those kinds of numbers on the board is limping. They are sprinting. Yet the theme persists it’s one dead-cat bounce after another and she should be “doing better.” But what does that mean? That she should win every state? Even the best campaigns have good and bad days. That she should have sewn it up by now? Well, newsflash, she actually does have it sewn up by now. Every national campaign has certain good states and certain bad states. The Democratic Party, thank God, isn’t monolithic.
She’s unpopular? Well, first of all that’s sexist, as is the consistent devaluing and snide parsing of every success she has, which the media does. But tell me this: how is she unpopular? That she doesn’t draw 20,000 hipsters to a rally? Those are optics. And they don’t vote in the same number as Hillary Clinton’s core demographics (if I was running for office? I’d ignore the whole Flight of the Conchords crowd and focus on older voters, college educated whites, middle aged women, African Americans and rising new American communities including Latinos and Asians: they vote). How can somebody who, according to accepted wisdom is so unpopular, be winning by so much? Voters support their candidate because they want to. Not because they are forced to. And it’s clear by polls and votes that Hillary Clinton is vastly preferred.
Ergo, a winning candidate.
On Bernie:
As for being a progressive—other than saying how progressive he is ad nauseum—frankly, I just don’t see it. Senator, you’re no Ted Kennedy. There’s no solid legislative record of liberal lawmaking; and I don’t see him leading a single movement until he decided to run for President.
Bernie Sanders is a fighter for Bernie Sanders.
His record points to a career—with the exception of his mind boggling and shameful record on guns—as a reliable left-wing backbencher. Fair enough, and we need the votes and I hope he continues that trend when he’s back in the Senate next year. Congress is full, by the hundreds, in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle, of said rank-and-file backbenchers. But the idea that he has been a liberal crusader with an enviable quiver full of results is hogwash. Voters haven’t seen Mr. Sanders out in front on healthcare, on choice, on climate change and sustainability, in a meaningful way—backed up by the decades-long track record of results that, by the way, he should have by now if he’s a serious person—any more than they’ve seen him at the Met Gala in Alexander Wang. He occupied a vague niche in the mind of the American public until about ten political minutes ago.
This article is a must read!
Now that I’ve gone on for so long, I’ll turn the floor over to you. Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread. As always, this is an open thread.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: May 6, 2016 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: 2016 elections | Tags: Campaign Ads, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, The Republican Establishment |
Good Morning!
I had a lot of work to do on Wednesday so I spent most of yesterday relaxing which in my world means I’m reading a lot and walking Temple around the hood. I tried to spent my reading time on things a bit more uplifting than politics but this year is so fascinatingly and abjectly horrid that it’s hard to turn away. I may actually pick up the Game of Throne books again just as a contrast to these real-life machinations.
I managed to tune in to Rachel Maddow long enough to watch her perform “anti-Trump Republican anguish” as beat-style poetry. Real quotes from Real Republicans Since Donald Trump was nominated is a total gas to watch. I laughed so hard that Temple nearly got a red wine shower. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has withheld his support for Trump. Mary Matalin has jumped parties and is re-registering down here in the Big Easy as Libertarian. The entire krewe of Red State has entered a period of mourning and disgust. It’s hard to fight back smugness at this point.
House Speaker Paul Ryan’s extraordinary statement Thursday that he’s “just not ready” to support Donald Trump highlights a challenge for the real-estate developer and TV personality on the week that he unexpectedly eliminated his rivals and cementedhis status as presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Ryan joined a growing list of Republican elites who have resisted supporting their new standard-bearer and made a variety of vague demands of him, such as proving he’s committed to conservatism and is White House material, before offering their support. Republicans have refrained from handing down straightforward ultimatums, which suggests many will ultimately get behind him. But the dissent from within is highly unusual for a major-party candidate who has locked up the nomination and is shifting into general-election mode.
“I hope to and I want to” support Trump, Ryan said on CNN. But he said the billionaire “needs to do more to unify this party” by demonstrating to conservatives that he “shares our values” and “bears our standards.”
Trump fired back by questioning Ryan’s fitness to be Speaker.
Roughly 90 minutes later, Trump came back with a sharp critique of another comment Ryan made Thursday.
“Paul Ryan said that I inherited something very special, the Republican Party. Wrong, I didn’t inherit it, I won it with millions of voters!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
The subtle difference Trump highlighted was a piercing remark that speaks to the rift between mainstream Republicans and the polarizing, unconventional candidate who has risen to become the face of the party. His proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. and refusal to disavow David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan led to Ryan’s implicit rebuke of the candidate throughout the primary, but Trump’s rhetoric has resonated with millions of voters, who have come out in droves across the country to support his candidacy.
Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson went a step further than her boss, suggesting that the Wisconsin Republican is unfit for his leadership role if he can’t support the party’s presumptive nominee.
Asked plainly by CNN’s John Berman whether Ryan is fit to be speaker if he can’t come around to supporting Trump, Pierson responded, “No, because this is about the party.”
Ryan suggested the onus was on Trump to show he can unite the different wings of the Republican Party, but Pierson disagreed, noting that since Trump has yet to clinch 1,237 delegates, he’s only the presumptive nominee.
This should make all the Republicans crazy go nuts since Ryan is the party’s boy wonder atm. Trump has announced he will be fundraising a billion dollars to take on Hillary Clinton in the General. Sheldon Addison has decided to back Trump. I’m not sure if any of his other fellow billionaires will follow suit. The amount of stunned establishment Republicans Rejecting Trump the last two days is pretty jaw-dropping.
CNN reached out to 16 Republican elected officials, leaders and major fundraisers associated with former Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney. Speaking on background, none of them said they were planning to go to this summer’s Republican convention. They didn’t say they would vote for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. But they said they were not yet supporting Trump.
2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney declared he’d skip the convention, joining at least three prior Republican nominees — John McCain and both Presidents Bush — in declining to attend the event.
Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake told CNN’s Manu Raju that “some of Trump’s positions” make it “very difficult for me” to support him.
Meanwhile, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse went on a lengthy Facebook diatribe against Trump and conservative blogger Erick Erickson said some members of Congress have joined his effort to recruit a third-party candidate.
BB’s post yesterday had more information on the Bush rejection of Trump. Certainly, his behavior towards Jeb is a good rationale of the cold shoulder treatment. But so are the continual attacks Dubya for not preventing 9-11 and for the Iraq War. McCain may actually lose his Senate Senate over this.
The odd assortment of religious freaks, neoconfederates,greedy ass country clubbers, intellectually and emotionally stunted libertarians, and angry working class white men put together by the party to win elections from Nixon forward is coming
completely unglued. Watching all of this come to this year’s election–which I can only characterize as a bunch of white straight men throwing toddler-like temper tantrums for not getting their way on everything–has been enlightening.
Hillary Clinton is already making hay from Trump quotes and from quotes about Trump by fellow Republicans.
Talk about putting the opposition to work for you.
Hillary Clinton‘s latest campaign ad is the ultimate #TBT – to the past eight months of the Republican primary campaign and the GOP’s own most biting comments about its freshly minted presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.
The web ad that Clinton tweeted out Wednesday night showcases insults from the likes of Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush to argue that Trump is anything but the party “unifier” he now claims to be.
“Con artist,” “phony” “know-nothing candidate,” “bully” and “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency,” are just a few of the disparaging namesTrump’s Republican critics call him in the clip.
“He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe,” says Bush, pointing to what he calls Trump’s “deep insecurity and weakness.”
Some think this actually helps Trump since it actually quotes mostly the Republican establishment that the Trumpsters hate. However, I’m not thinking the die hard Trumpsters are the targeted voters right now. I think it’s the huge huge number of Republican voters that haven’t been paying real attention to what the party’s has been about for years.
More broadly, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is repositioning itself, after a year of staking out liberal positions and focusing largely on minority voters, to appeal to independent and Republican-leaning white voters turned off by Mr. Trump.
With the Democratic nomination in sight, Mrs. Clinton has broadened her economic message, devoted days to apologizing for a comment she previously made that angered working-class whites, and has pledged that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who remains widely popular among the blue-collar voters drawn to Mr. Trump, would “come out of retirement and be in charge” of creating jobs in places that have been particularly hard hit.
The media is full of examples today of talking heads mansplaining to Hillary’s campaign how to deal with the Donald. I would like to add that they sure didn’t do a great job of dealing with The Donald before he metastasized into the Republican Presidential candidate for 2016 so why should we take any of them very seriously?
Now, with regard to the tough guy stuff. The way to shred that calling card is with the military. This may surprise you at first blush. Surely, you think, military types will prefer Trump to Clinton! He’s a man. He talks tough. He’s not gonna pussyfoot around with ISIS the way those Democrats always do.
If you think this, I implore you to read Trump at War by Andy Kroll. It’s about how military people are terrified at the thought of Trump becoming their commander-in-chief, because they think he knows nothing about their line of work and they fear that someone who talks like he does without understanding the consequences will start World War III. Some people quoted in the article spoke openly of having to disobey President Trump’s orders, which is not only permissible but called for when an officer believes that a president’s orders violate code and law.
“You bet your ass” I’d reinstitute waterboarding, Trump has said. Military and intelligence professionals are the last people in the world who want that. It violated international law, which most of them actually care about. And the controversy over it crushed morale. A former CIA general counsel told Kroll that if President Trump ordered water-boarding and other forms of torture, staff would abandon the agency. “At a minimum,” the lawyer said, “people would refuse to participate in anything resembling the former interrogation program and insist on a transfer to another part of the agency where they wouldn’t be involved in these things.”
Conversely, more military people than you’d expect kind of respect Clinton. No, not because she voted for the Iraq War. Because she sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee and got to know their issues. Knows the difference between a brigade and a regiment. Put in ample face time as senator at New York’s military bases. They respect her.
There’s even a more brutal ad that lets Trump be Trump. It’s like a montage of his most sexist, racist, idiotic
statements. I think it’s absolutely funny that it came out on Cinco de Mayo given some of the worst quotes in it are about Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. You can see the ad directly on BB’s post yesterday.
This is just a Web ad, but as Josh Vorhees notes, it’s reasonable to see this as a template for the massive onslaught of paid ads to come. And this ad also highlights a key dynamic in this campaign that continues to go under-appreciated.
As I’ve argued, the general election will differ from the primaries in an important sense: Unlike Republicans, Democrats will not be constrained from brutally unmasking the truly wretched nature of his racial appeals. Trump’s GOP rivals had to treat his xenophobia, bigotry, and demagoguery with kid gloves, because many Republican voters agreed with his vows to ban Muslims and carry out mass deportations. But the broader general electorate does not agree with those things. Indeed, many voters that populate key general election constituencies are likely horrified by them. As a result, Democrats will be able to prosecute Trump mercilessly in ways his GOP rivals simply could not — with a relentless, non-diluted, non-euphemistic focus on his white nationalism.
Cook Political Reports just released its first look at the Electoral Vote for the 2016 General and you’ll be surprised at the number of states that are in play that are usually solidly Republican. This general is shaping up to be an incredible state of affairs in many ways. Humor me for quoting this Joe Klein piece at Time Magazine that beckons’ with this bit of clickbait: “Hillary Clinton’s ultimate trump card will not be her gender but her relative humanity.”
In some ways, Hillary faces an easier task. Donald Trump is an implausible President of the United States. But she has a problem that Bill never had. He swept to the presidency on a wave of pure energy and enthusiasm–this was something new, the baby boomers were taking over! Hillary is the George H.W. Bush of this campaign, selling stability–which may prove to be a marketable asset, given the craziness on the Republican side–but momentum feeds on excitement. Core polling perceptions like “trustworthiness” can turn, but they need some impetus.
Her vice-presidential choice will be important. A traditional pick would be someone young and Latino and male, but Hillary’s equivalent of an Al Gore would be … Elizabeth Warren. Another woman, but an outsider; a candidate who could rally Bernie’s legions of new voters, and who would be an excellent attack dog (a crucial vice-presidential function). I know, I know: the Clinton camp mistrusts Warren. She’d be a loose cannon, a risk. Her presence on the ticket might limit Hillary’s attempts to woo moderate Republicans and foreign policy hawks, which raises another possibility: Why not pick a moderate Republican woman–Condoleezza Rice, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley–to stem the barbarian tide? That would be unthinkably new.
Inevitably, the vice-presidential selection will take a backseat in the general election. The presidency is won in discrete moments, as the public gauges the humanity of the candidates. Donald Trump is more a brand than a person; given the spray tan and egregious comb-over, he looks more like a panjandrum in The Hunger Games than a regular guy. How many spontaneous, empathetic human interactions has he had with individual voters? None that I can remember. He is all facade.
There is a basic rule of politics in the television age: warm always beats cold (with the exception of Richard Nixon). Hillary Clinton’s ultimate trump card will be not her gender but her relative humanity–an ironic twist given her public awkwardness. Her decision to sit down with West Virginia coal miners and apologize for her harsh, but realistic, prediction that they’ll be losing their jobs is the sort of thing that would be unimaginable for Trump. In the amped intimacy of a presidential campaign, such moments matter.
I’m sure we’re in for quite the bumpy ride so buckle up and buckle down. Hang in here with us because we’ll be hanging in there with and for Madam President. There’s bound to be many revoltin’ developments in the near future and we won’t shy from them.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments