It’s clear that there’s a serious problem out there that none of the involved parties — the MSM, the campaigns, the political establishment — want to discuss when it comes to race, gender, even religion and their impact on the presidential race — their bumbling roles.
Well-paid pundits pull “analysis” out of their posteriors during these primaries and caucuses and have nothing to back up their predictions (which usually end up wrong anyway). Political experts both in the campaigns, the pollsters and in the MSM really don’t know WTF they are chattering about, but they simply cannot admit it. You get the feeling when you watch that they think they know more than you do and want to project that all-knowing gravitas, but as we’ve seen, all that some of them have managed to do is look like jackasses over and over.
Why? This is an presidential election with so many firsts — a black man and a woman at the precipice of being a party’s nominee, a Mormon candidate, a former president campaigning for his wife — all the rules and standard operating procedures have gone out the window and you see serious on-air and in-print fumbling. There are desperate attempts to make sense of wide margins of victory that were not predicted (for Clinton or Obama), why John McCain’s campaign rose from the dead, or what role did anti-Mormonism play in Romney’s defeat. No one knows, and they cannot claim to know. There are no “experts” on this. Part of the mystery is that the voters are not behaving in predictable fashion, and the establishment doesn’t like unpredictability.
For spectators like me, it’s refreshing to see the chaos, as it provides ample entertainment to see pundits self-immolate on live TV. There’s so much freelancing and free association going on that is actually foot-in-mouth disease, as cultural and gender biases just tumble out. It’s fascinating, if painful. If only opportunities like these would turn into more self-reflection on the role of subjects that are avoided in polite company because it makes people uncomfortable. We have another example today…
MSNBC’s David Shuster suspended for Chelsea Clinton ‘pimped out’ remark
What’s infinitely interesting about the odd oozing of misogyny in this election cycle is how easily it slips from the lips of talking heads on the air who don’t seem to have a clue that what they say is sexist in any way.
Chelsea Clinton, who has been out on the road stumping for her mom, trying to twist a few superdelegate arms, you know, doing what most political adult children do for their parents who are running for office. Somehow, the mind of MSNBC’s David Shuster (normally a stellar reporter, btw), had a Cro-Magnon moment with this comment. (via Shakesville):
The segment began with Shuster saying, which is not on the video: “There’s just something a little bit unseemly to me that Chelsea’s out there calling up celebrities, saying support my mom, and she’s apparently also calling these super delegates.” To which Bill Press replied: “Hey, she’s working for her mom. What’s unseemly about that? During the last campaign, the Bush twins were out working for their dad. I think it’s great, I think she’s grown up in a political family—” which is where the video picks up:Lest you think this wasn’t a big deal, it rightfully got Shuster in major hot water; he tried damage control on Morning Joe this AM with one of those non-apology apologies (video here):PRESS: —she’s got politics in her blood, she loves her mom, she thinks she’d make a great president [crosstalk]
SHUSTER: But doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way? [laughter]
PRESS: No! If she didn’t want to be there, she wouldn’t be there. I mean, give Chelsea a break.
In one fell swoop, Hillary is cast as a madam who forcibly “pimps out” her own daughter, and Chelsea is cast as a pathetic, vulnerable, and mindless whore who has no control over her own life.
“Last, night I used a phrase, some slang about her efforts…I didn’t think people would take it literally, but some people have, and to the extent that people feel that I was being pejorative about the actions of Chelsea Clinton making these phone calls, to the extent people thought I was being pejorative, I apologize for that.”Apparently that didn’t fly with the highers-up at MSNBC as a sh*tstorm of emails, and the fallout from The Tweety Effect a few weeks back has their radar up. NBC News President Steve Capus gave Shuster a professional time-out in the corner:
On Thursday’s “Tucker” on MSNBC, David Shuster, who was serving as guest-host of the program, made a comment about Chelsea Clinton and the Clinton campaign that was irresponsible and inappropriate. Shuster, who apologized this morning on MSNBC and will again this evening, has been suspended from appearing on all NBC News broadcasts, other than to make his apology. He has also extended an apology to the Clinton family. NBC News takes these matters seriously, and offers our sincere regrets to the Clintons for the remarks.Unfortunately, while Shuster got sandbagged for this one statement, MSNBC has let Chris Matthews’ inner Cro-Magnon run wild on the airwaves for years without sanction.
Dissecting the genesis of The Tweety Effect
Eric Boehlert of Media Matters has an interesting column up about how The Tweety Effect (”Where the misogyny of a talking head in the MSM so enrages a demographic that they go out and vote in a manner that will put egg on the face of the talking head“), coined and defined by your blogmistress, spread virally in the blogosphere during the Chris Matthews misogyny fracas prior to the New Hampshire primary. The MSNBC pontificator spent a lot of energy demeaning Hillary Clinton over her “emotional moment.” It was hardly the first time he let his Inner Cro-Magnon show.
I was interviewed for the piece as part of Eric’s analysis of how the term flew around the blogosphere and ultimately forced Matthews to make an apology.
“The importance of tonight’s win cannot be understated. It was a revolt of women sick and tired of the likes of Chris Tweety Matthews and the Media Misogynists. Their hatred of Hillary Clinton was soundly rejected by the voters,” announced TalkLeft, an influential liberal blog published out of Denver, Colorado, by defense attorney Jeralyn E. Merritt.It’s funny to read how the whole thing came about, since it developed in such an organic manner, eventually bubbling up into a full-blown campaign by Media Matters documenting Matthews’ extensive history of sexist potshots about Clinton. That helped bolster the posts in Blogtopia that followed in relation to the gender bias statements in the shadow of the New Hampshire primary by Chris Matthews.Blogging from her home in Durham, North Carolina, that night, Pam Spaulding quickly spotted the TalkLeft post and immediately copied-and-pasted it into the comments section at Pandagon, a prominent feminist blog that was posting lots of New Hampshire coverage and commentary.
No fan of Clinton’s (Spaulding says she’d written “horrid” things about Clinton’s candidacy prior to New Hampshire), the feminist blogger, whose widely read site normally focuses on gay and lesbian issues, felt compelled to come to the former first lady’s defense.
“The gender bias, this was stuff that women bloggers had been writing about for some time and now the Clinton coverage was proof of what we’ve known all along,” says Spaulding. “Even though I would prefer not to see Hillary Clinton as president, I do no want to see that kind of discourse on the talking heads programs. You expected the Republicans to slap her like that. But the fact that you had purportedly objective members of the media pontificating like that, it was almost like a gang up on her. It truly was unacceptable.”
…Now the firestorm had a name and it had been properly framed for further debate and discussion. “It was a shorthand that people became comfortable with and that’s [what] Republicans are usually good at,” says Spaulding. “They’re good at ‘cut and run’ and ‘flip flopper.’ They know how to use the language and press it over and over again.”
…Just moments before Spaulding typed up the Tweety Effect, the stalwart liberal blogger and sharp-eyed media watcher known simply as Digby had lowered her own boom on the press that night: “All the sickening media sexism we saw over the past couple of days didn’t work and all liberals of good conscience should be relieved by that.”
After publishing her post and still thirsty for more information and more opinions, Digby, from her home in Santa Monica, California, went over to Pandagon to see what the site’s bloggers and readers were saying about New Hampshire. Wading deep down into the comments section, Digby came across Spaulding’s “Tweety Effect” reference and knew it was too good not to pass along. “It just spoke to me,” says Digby. “It had a nice ring to it and it really seemed to explain what we had all been feeling over the last few days.” So the blogger went back and updated her post to include a link to Spaulding’s Tweety Effect item.
And at that point, the Tweety Effect really began to pin-ball around the liberal blogosphere. “The hits were out of control,” says Spaulding. “I really didn’t think that it was going to take off like that. People who have never linked to my blog picked up on it.” (Days later, Spaulding was invited to appear on CNN as a guest.)
***
The mainstream media, the pundits, the consultant class, the surrogates for campaigns — all have been wrong, sometimes very wrongheaded, and they lack any humility when called on the carpet.
Here’s another example of political free-form asshattery, the kind of thinking aloud that really makes you wonder about folks in the rarified air of professional political commentary. From John Derbyshire at the National Review, theories on how “black” a state’s population is determines whether they will vote for THE BLACK MAN.
A meme with content along the lines of the following, is zipping around the blogosphere:This “theory” comes from a nugget of truth (though not one specific to voting patterns that any of these big brains can point to). I think they are conflating the historical issue of white flight with this; that when the minority saturation of a given neighborhood/school reaches a certain threshold, white residents become uncomfortable and move to whiter environs that are more culturally comfortable or place their kids in private schools, fearing lower property values, and perceive crime is not far behind if too many of “those people” move in.Barack Obama has been doing well (and presumably will continue to do well) in
(a) places where there are big numbers of black people
and
(b) places where there are very few black people.
In the (a) places, black voters will turn out for him in droves. In the (b) places, people feel little racial tension, will take the candidate on his merits, and be pleased by his uplifting rhetoric.
However, in places where the proportion of black citizens is big enough to cause tension, but not big enough to swing an election, the white majority will not support Obama, and he will do badly.
Applying that line of thinking to the voting process in this cycle is weak; there are too many factors to consider, and states cannot so easily be pigeonholed to make broad generalizations like this. To his credit, Derbyshire isn’t citing any bogus statistics to back up this BS, but is floating it out there to be validated by some other “big brain” who will pontificate the same in their column/blog. As we all know, half the punditry is regurgitated BS like this. Repeat it enough and someone will be deemed brilliant.
As I said, this election cycle is not like any other, look at how wrong the pollsters have been, the political savants, the talking heads, the consultants, the fundraisers. It’s a beautiful thing for democracy, even if it is messy. Too bad Derbyshire and the rest are breaking their craniums to try to fit what’s happening into a cubby hole so they can feel comfortable. It’s unsettling for people who think they know politics when things are upended so wonderfully.
51 Responses to “An election cycle that breaks all the rules - and the establishment is in knots”
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I hope that the Obama camp likewise dumps MSNBC and takes the debate elsewhere. It would be (a) the right thing to do and (b) good politics since it would blunt the support that HRC garners from the rightful indignation captured by the Tweety effect.
So having Chelsea Clinton make a few campaign appearances is “pimping her out,” but having Romney’s five sons drive cross-country making campaign appearances is just them helping out Dad?
I think part of the pundits’ problem is that they don’t realize that the voters aren’t paying attention to their opinions anymore. It’s like what has happened with popular film criticism: most people don’t read reviews.
I’m going to keep this mantra up for as long as I can: given the way the primaries have been running, a Clinton/Obama ticket would be unbeatable. Hopefully somebody in the DNC is smart enough to realize that.
I don’t have a dog in this fight right now, so I’m enjoying the sight of all those feet in all those mouths.
No way they would sack Matthews, so Shuster had to go.
We are all socialized to characterize certain ideas, things, and actions as good or bad. This happens because the people around us provide praise and shame. People respond by altering behavior to varying degrees, but they respond nonetheless—whether they know they do or not.
Shuster tosses off the insulting phrase “pimping her out” without an apparent second thought. People who believe that pundits deliberately choose their rhetoric—a skill professional talkers should master—interpret the phrase and rightly find misogyny. Shuster has earned their criticism.
But someone socialized him to believe this phrase tossable—he believed it would make a point he wanted to make. Those who object should work to change this norm. Reacting to these gaffes helps make this happen. Shuster apologizes, albeit weakly, the norm shifts just a little bit, and professional talkers adjust their behavior.
But those who would change the norm must act proactively as well. Every conversation in an elevator or on a bus makes people think. Talk to people.
Mnemosyne: Many liberals and progressives will vote Green or stay home rather than vote for a conservative like Hillary Clinton. Peace activists will end up protesting many of her campaign appearances over the summer as well.
Keep tugging, yanking, and spitting on the ropes Pam!
Oh, not just voting patterns and candidates are unpredictable … who is voting when and where and for what party has become a major free-for-all with huge turnouts and vote totals that exceed the traditional number of enrolled party members in many areas.
Game on!
Mnemosyne: Many liberals and progressives will vote Green or stay home rather than vote for a conservative like Hillary Clinton.
Because that just turned out so freaking well the last time, didn’t it?
Knot? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Mathematically speaking, It seems neither Hillary nor Obama can win decisively. Thus this will be a thin margin primary.
1. There will be a lot of shenanigans (eg. machine does’t read, ballot tampering, mis count or misdirection.) This will lead to break down of confidence and legitimacy.
2. Super delegates will matter a great deal. And in the end the bargaining will weaken candidate.
3. Super delegates will pretty much group themselves in natural political alliances and money power. And DLC/bluedog currently controles the biggest superdelegates chunks.
you do the math.
http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/wash-post-nearly-impossible-for-hillary.html
The Washington Post’s Paul Kane: “We’ve done a bad job of explaining this, but it is now basically mathematically impossible for either Clinton or Obama to win the nomination through the regular voting process (meaning the super-delegates decide this one, baby!).
“Here’s the math. There are 3,253 pledged delegates, those doled out based on actual voting in primaries and caucuses. And you need 2,025 to win the nomination. To date, about 55% of those 3,253 delegates have been pledged in the voting process — with Clinton and Obamb roughly splitting them at about 900 delegates a piece. That means there are now only about 1,400 delegates left up for grabs in the remaining states and territories voting.
“So, do the math. If they both have about 900 pledged delegates so far, they need to win more than 1,100 of the remaining 1,400 delegates to win the nomination through actual voting.
“Ain’t gonna happen, barring a stunning scandal or some new crazy revelation. So, they’ll keep fighting this thing out, each accumulating their chunk of delegates, one of them holding a slight edge and both finishing the voting process with 1,600 or so delegates. And then the super delegates decide this thing. That’s the math.”
Many liberals and progressives will vote Green or stay home rather than vote for a conservative like Hillary Clinton.
You have GOT to be kidding. Who wants a repeat of 2000? All the libs and proggies I know would rather see just about any Democrat - yes, even HRC - in office rather than Yet Another Refuckingpiglican.
Thank you for this extra-special edition of Biting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face.
Mnemosyne, I agree! I’ve been pulling for said Clinton/Obama ticket since New Hampshire. Strength in unity, and such an awesome statement!
“voters are not behaving in predictable fashion, and the establishment doesn’t like unpredictability”
I agree they don’t like the feeling that they can’t tell what is going on. That is the best part of this whole process the establishment on the outside looking in!
I really don’t see a strong case for the Clinton / Obama ticket other than it would keep strong supporters of one who resent the other from staying home in November. Otherwise, it has all of the negatives of a Clinton ticket (limited appeal to swing voters, baggage from the 1990s, uncharismatic candidate well liked in solid blue states but with high negatives for the country as a whole) and I’m honestly not sure that Obama brings as much to the ticket as a VP as one might think. A big part of his strength is that he seems to appeal to some more centrist and conservative folks who usually don’t vote for people with his ideological commitments. These folks probably aren’t going to vote for Clinton because Obama is on the ticket (though some of them would vote for Clinton on her own merits). Obama is a great speaker and comes across as thoughtful and likable in interviews. That is great for a Presidential candidate. But the VP spot is different - here you want someone who is going to be an attack dog - someone who will say stuff that you want to get out there but that the Presidential candidate isn’t supposed to say quite so explicitly. And this definately isn’t Obama. Furthermore, he is only a so-so debator which probably will matter a bit (nobody cares about the VP’s speeches, but there is likely to be one fairly high profile VP debate in October). Finally, he is from IL which is not any sort of swing state so he doesn’t bring much of anything useful in terms of a regional base (people in Iowa seem to like him a lot, but this doesn’t mean that they’ll vote for Clinton because of him).
The long range strategic considerations are also against this - if Clinton loses to McCain, then Obama looks like a strong candidate for 2012 when he will be more well-known, more experienced, and probably not facing an incumbent. He and maybe Mark Warner would probably look like the strongest Democrats. If he is a losing VP candidate, then he is (a) tarnished, (b) going to be associated with Clinton who is a pretty polarizing figure and will have lost the election.
Sure it is possible that Obama will get his turn in 2016. But I’m a little skeptical that Clinton will win two terms and remain popular enough to give her VP an edge in 2016. Possible, but the odds are pretty substantially against it (20%-30% chance, maybe less). Too many things can go wrong and once Obama is strongly associated with the Clinton White House he is to some extent at the mercy of its success.
Remember 2004. John Edwards wasn’t bad as a VP candidate, but he didn’t seem to do too much for Kerry either, despite having some clear strengths as a Presidential candidate. Notice the same problems as above: no useful regional base, didn’t do especially well against Cheney in the debates, not an especially effective surrogate (not bad, but not great either).
When deciding whether or not something or someone is sexist or racist, I do some reframing. If someone –say Bill Clinton– said, “Obama is pimping his wife and daughters …” …most people would see that as a racist statement. And they’d be right IMHO. Yet, the original statement doesn’t seem sexist in the slightest to much of blogtopia.
i’ve actually lost interest in following the races too closely because, well, almost all of the commentary is foolish. On ABC the other night, they were going on about Latinos being unwilling to vote for a black as the reason for Hillary’s strong showing in CA. What? Maybe, just maybe, people prefer one candidate over another and aren’t making decisions based on that other stuff.
I didn’t vote on Super Tuesday. I overslept and it would have taken major work to get to the polling place’s location, and the candidate I supported dropped out….and, really, I don’t have a favorite among the remaining two–for a variety of reasons (basically, Edwards was the only one talking about the class structure and its problems, and that was my biggest issue–Obama’s better on the war, Hillary is better on health care….etc. etc., but only Edwards was talking about the larger structural issues).
But, I’ve really lost a lot of interest. Not only is the discourse driven by the talking heads stupid, we live in a stupid country. GASP, I questioned the wisdom of THE PEOPLE. But we’re stupid. We’ve got a decent size of the population willing to vote for a candidate based on his hostility to science and modernity. We’ve got an entire party who thinks there’s no such thing as torture–when applied to others–and no right (other than the right of Christians to worship) that is inviolable in this “war.” And we’ve got a bunch of ethically and intellectually void people screaming “fuck yeah!”
One of the big problems is a political culture in which batshit insanity (basically, contemporary Republicanism) can’t be called crazy, but liberalism can certainly be labeled unpatriotic (I almost hope Willard dies in a plane crash soon–the world will be a better place without him).
There’s not much worth saving in that system. Not much of anything of value.
To follow up on the previous post, Clinton would be well served to look closely at Wesley Clark (national security cred), Ted Strickland (pander to Ohio), and Jim Webb (national security cred, culturally Scotch-Irish figure should play well in upper south and lower midwest - not sure if he would make VA competitive). These three all might be inferior Presidential candidates to Obama, but they all bring stuff to the table as VP candidates that he doesn’t.
The thing that gets me is that all this “punditry” shows how sad our MSM is in dealing with the most salient, most important issues in politics. And by politics, i mean, what’s actually going on, as opposed to the narrative media usually offers about it. So far in this election cycle we’ve heard:
1. That Latinos hate black people
2. That Rudy Giuliani was a serious front-runner
3. That people are voting for Hillary Clinton because she’s a woman and it’s her “turn”
This is a result of putting people who have never studied or devoted serious attention to these issues in the roles that frame our public debate. It’s like putting George W. Bush in charge of the government. After the tornadoes, he said “Yeah, government can help, but you know what else can help? Prayer! Your government is helping, but uh, what’s more significant as President is for me to tell you: prayer!” And what do we get? The Christian Bible Network on the Meet the Press roundtable. This mainstream media and the PR corps who pander to it are run by the people who lost your 10th grade student government election.
Webb would certainly make VA competitive …especially against McCain.
“Political experts both in the campaigns, the pollsters and in the MSM really don’t know WTF they are chattering about, but they simply cannot admit it. You get the feeling when you watch that they think they know more than you do and want to project that all-knowing gravitas, but as we’ve seen, all that some of them have managed to do is look like jackasses over and over.”
Careful, Pam, your statement contradicts Pandagon’s parroting of MSM memes about Hillary Clinton’s electability, the Democratic Party’s single issue platform–the Iraq War Authorization vote, and the hand-wringing over Bill Clinton campaigning on behalf of his wife!
It’s like putting George W. Bush in charge of the government. After the tornadoes, he said “Yeah, government can help, but you know what else can help? Prayer! Your government is helping, but uh, what’s more significant as President is for me to tell you: prayer!” And what do we get? The Christian Bible Network on the Meet the Press roundtable. This mainstream media and the PR corps who pander to it are run by the people who lost your 10th grade student government election.
But faith and prayer, despite their real world inefficacy, are to be respected despite their worthlessness. Policy based in the real world is “wonkishness” and dull and therefore not to be taken as seriously as the silliness of prayer as a solution. If people feel like it will work, that’s far more important than making things work.
Faith-based social policy. Faith-based engineering. Faith-based “intelligence.”
Faith is worthless in the sphere of real-world policy decisions.
I doubt that Clinton would beat McCain in Virginia without winning Ohio, NH and various other swing states as well. Also Webb doesn’t have great numbers in VA and has only been a Senator for a year. So I don’t think that putting Webb on the ticket as a play for VA makes sense for Clinton, though he might help in other ways as a noted above. With Obama it is harder to predict, though I tend to feel that the same analysis used for Clinton-McCain probably applies. Though Virginia is a realtively better state than Ohio or Florida for Obama than for Clinton, I think . . .
MAJeff, you sound depressed tonight. I think it might be time for you to make the big move north to Canada. Come! The weather is cold, the people are warm! And we might be able to oust our conservative asswipe soon!
While Hillary could certainly look at other candidates, I still think that C/O ticket has a lot of promise. The regions Hilary is popular are not the regions that Obama is (simple reduction: coastal vs. heartland), and fighting blog-factions aside, there are reports of so many people really trying to decide “which kitten is cutest,” regardless of which candidate they ultimately vote for. The option to vote for both of them could be very psychically satisfying, especially for those so jonesing for “change.” It’s both hugely symbolic, and acknowledges those who voted in the primary that the race was so evenly matched. It’s a cooperative option, instead of a zero-sum game.
And who’s to say that the P/VP relationship has to play out as tradition dictates? As the entire post above illustrates, it’s an entirely new game. They could make their own rules.
I do wish people would stop parroting this. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and as Liss notes, just because people aren’t loudly proclaiming their support for her, there may be many reasons why they’re not doing so - but that doesn’t mean they’re not pulling the lever for her when the time comes. Look at the numbers: as of right now, she’s winning, there is at least some reaonable measure of electability.
The fact that it’s a woman on the ticket (potentially with a black man in the Veep slot), it’s isn’t silly to suppose that people who previously found themselves alienated by the overwhelmingly white-Christian-male system may find themselves voting in the general election, even if they’ve never voted before. 51% of the population is female - though a percentage has to be taken out to account for total wingnuts. Persons of colour (male or female) might be likely to vote for any ticket that represents movement towards equality. And there have to be some Democratic white men who - if aren’t outright fervent supporters of Clinton or Obama themselves - will still prefer them to Republican rule, and beyond that, there may be more centrist Republicans who might not be happy with the ticket provided to them, and find Clinton’s policies amenable to them. We don’t know.
It’s a whole new ballgame, and for serious, can we stop repeating that she’s so “divisive” and “unelectable” just because while male asshats keep repeating it as ULTIMATE TRUTH?
Mnemosyne: Many liberals and progressives will vote Green or stay home rather than vote for a conservative like Hillary Clinton. Peace activists will end up protesting many of her campaign appearances over the summer as well.
If Green Party members don’t want to vote for another party’s candidate, that’s their business. But if you call yourself a Democrat and you stay home like a whiny-ass titty baby because OMG a GURL got the nomination!!! then you deserve everything you get, which is hatred from your peers, President McCain, and nuclear war in Iran.
You tried to convince us before that there was no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. If you still think that after the past seven years, you’re a fool who’s not even worth talking to.
***********************************
“Many liberals and progressives will vote Green or stay home rather than vote for a conservative like Hillary Clinton.
***********************************
And that’ll be the awesomest thing ever, because instead of a crazy right winger like Hillary (with her Supreme Court nominees all anti-choice and anti-woman) we’ll have McCain instead, who’ll be all “Yeah, let them knocked-up dirty pussies make their own reproductive decisions–abortions for everyone–yay!”
You’ve so bi-majorly sold me the Green-pure side, you’ve fer frickin’ bought my ‘gina & I’m totally pissing down my own leg and calling it a sweet, cleansing rain of truth–cuz we all know, you never support ANY imperfect woman, you just wait until the perfect piece of bitch-meat comes along, and THEN you vote for THAT!! (Well, that and her perfect rack of titty-ness–cuz if a bitch ain’t perfect, at the very least, she needs a major tit-shelf to sweeten the deal. If not, she needs to pissed away into nothing-ness–woot! McCain 4-ever! Vote Green to Stop Hillary!! Fuck the Imperfect Bitch! We all gotta save progressive America by letting McCain win!!)
I must say I have found support for Schuster’s comments amongst the progressive blogasphere very disheartening. Clintonian hatred seems to trump common decency. And I must say – my respect for Hillary Clinton has grown with each salvo. She’s withstood withering attacks. My god – if people feel comfortable SAYING this kind of shit on air - just think of what must end up in her mail every day. And let us not forget the really scary people out there.
No – Hillary Clinton is one strong lady – and I for one think she’d make one helluva president. Tempered steel, my friends – our own Iron Maiden. I’m impressed – and I didn’t support her initially. She’s won me by standing tall each day no matter what. All Matthews and Schuster and the rest have done is show just how strong she is. So keep it up, Tweety – you’ll get her elected yet!
I’m an Edwards supporter who voted for Obama in the California primary. I’ve never been entirely clear about the extent to which considerations of electability influence my preferences; Edwards was closer to my values than the other major candidates, but I never considered Kucinich.
I really like the enthusiasm Obama collects, and I’m heartened by younger generations less crippled by racism than mine. A few weeks ago I opined at a family gathering (my family is intensely political, fifth generation Democrat, third generation atheist) that Barack Hussein Obama might turn out to be more electable than (yawn) yet another white southern male.
Watching Bill Maher tonight, and clips of both candidates, I was struck by how much more poised and less formulaic Hillary was than Barack.
We worry about her negatives, how so many people hate her, but we’ve also heard that people who actually see her or meet her are pleasantly suprised to learn that she doesn’t actually sprout horns.
OT, and yet not really: “whiny ass titty baby” is an extremely sexist remark. Yes, yes, I know it’s “cool” because Duncan Black came up with it, but I wish people would stop using it.
I don’t remember a time (even a Bush family wedding or foreign dignitaries hanging in Kennebunkport) when we’ve EVER had so many high-profile politicos in Maine in the same week: Teddy Kennedy, Barack Obama, Hillary-Bill- and Chelsea Clinton, who knows who else will make an appearance before tomorrow’s caucuses. Local media is having a great time; the governor and Bill went shopping together at LL Bean’s before he spoke in Portland.
Hillary is really canvassing the state today: Orono, then a 4 hour rally in Lewiston, then Portland- and she was doing live interviews from Seattle yesterday at noon. But I just looked up a poll on BDN (Bangor Daily News)’s website: for as much as the local pundits are saying that she’s expected to win here, 60 percent of the 807 folks participating in the polls said they were going with OBAMA in tomorrow’s caucus.
Go to WCSH.com for the live interviews, etc…
“We’ve got an entire party who thinks there’s no such thing as torture–when applied to others–and no right (other than the right of Christians to worship) that is inviolable in this “war.” And we’ve got a bunch of ethically and intellectually void people screaming “fuck yeah!””
MAJeff, you’re talking about Jim B Troll, aren’t you?…
MikeEss…him and CPAC and all that gang of fuckwits.
Slightlyt OT: As much as I like Sen. Clinton, I do worry about her electability. I’m in a region that went for Romney, and an awful lot of people here really dislike McCain. However, they also have an irrational hatred of Hillary Clinton. I worry that, in states like mine or worse, Minnesota, that this undeserved hatred of Clinton will motivate Republicans to get out and vote, rather than sit it out. And with Minnesota becoming less reliably “blue” with every election, I’m not confident about Clinton’s actual chances of winning with a large enough margin for this election to not be stolen.
Which is a shame, since I greatly admire Clinton. Do I have this all wrong? ‘Cuz I’d be glad to be convinced otherwise!
And what’s with all the BS about if so-and-so is nominated, people will vote Green or not vote at all? I’m a newb here, and hardly the smartest poster, and even I know how incredibly stupid that is.
And with Minnesota becoming less reliably “blue” with every election, I’m not confident about Clinton’s actual chances of winning with a large enough margin for this election to not be stolen.
Umm…the DFL has been picking up seats in the state legislature over the past couple cycles. It also picked up the 1st CD seat, ousting long-timer and idiot extraordinaire Gil Gutknecht in 2006. In 2004 Kerry won Edina. Kerry won Edina! Democratic Pres candidates don’t win Edina. It’s not as dire as it seems in Minnesota.
Oh no, Ron Paul is out! The system has failed us!
http://ronpaul2008.typepad.com/ron_paul_2008/2008/02/message-from-ro.html
“Oh no, Ron Paul is out! The system has failed us!”
The Trilateral Commission, The Bilderbergers, and the Bohemian Club have all conspired to eliminate the man best qualified to be our glorious leader and bring this country back to peace and prosperity!!!
They CAN’T TAKE THE TRUTH!!1!!!1!!!!11!…
Now that DR PAUL (google it!) has dropped out, all of our hope rests on Ambassador Keyes. GO AL GO!
I have not been in a fistfight since age 15. But if a Green or someone similar approaches me during the election and utters the words “Clinton and McCain—there’s no difference,” I swear to God I will punch that person in the face.
tinfoil hattie,
I was wondering if I was the only person who saw sexism in the WATB label. Glad to know I’m not the only one.
““Many liberals and progressives will vote Green or stay home rather than vote for a ( . . .) like Hillary Clinton.
***********************************
And that’ll be the awesomest thing ever, because instead of a crazy right winger like Hillary (with her Supreme Court nominees all anti-choice and anti-woman) we’ll have McCain instead, who’ll be all “Yeah, let them knocked-up dirty pussies make their own reproductive decisions–abortions for everyone–yay!”
You’ve so bi-majorly sold me the Green-pure side, you’ve fer frickin’ bought my ‘gina & I’m totally pissing down my own leg and calling it a sweet, cleansing rain of truth–cuz we all know, you never support ANY imperfect woman, you just wait until the perfect piece of bitch-meat comes along, and THEN you vote for THAT!! (Well, that and her perfect rack of titty-ness–cuz if a bitch ain’t perfect, at the very least, she needs a major tit-shelf to sweeten the deal. If not, she needs to pissed away into nothing-ness–woot! McCain 4-ever! Vote Green to Stop Hillary!! Fuck the Imperfect Bitch! We all gotta save progressive America by letting McCain win!!) ”
WHAT YOU SAID.
YES!!
And what you said, Bitter Scribe.
Jesus frickin’ Christ.
I just read in the Chronicle Breaking News that Huckabee won Kansas. Sooo…while McCain is still the likely Rethug nominee, he by no means has it all sewn up, even if Senator Clinton is the Democratic candidate.
I’m preferring to look on the bright side, for now, and believe that a) enough people hate McCain on the Rethug side, and b) enough Democrats/Independents just DO NOT WANT another Repig presidency that they will even vote for the Dread Hillary.
BTW, I was reading Richard Rodriguez’ article on Salon.com analyzing the Latino vote (Latinos voted overwhelmingly democratic and for Senator Clinton) - it appears that Latino men (and Asian men) don’t have the heebie-jeebies that so many white guys do about Sen. Clinton. (Rodriguez surmises that for all the talk and posturing of “machismo,” Latino men are used to deferring to powerful older women; they look at Sen. Clinton and see “gravitas” rather than “OMG vagina dentata.”)
Brilliant!!
Ailurophile -
It was your last paragraph I was referring to: “vagina dentata” indeed!!!
OT, and yet not really: “whiny ass titty baby” is an extremely sexist remark.
Really? Because I always picture a two-year old who’s being weaned and is throwing a tantrum about it. How is that sexist?
In a lot of Asian households, women holds the pocketbook.
I really don’t see a Clinton/Obama ticket. Or an Obama/Clinton ticket. If she’s the nominee, why would she put someone with that much star power and charisma in the second slot? You need a veep who bolsters the nominee, maybe counters some perceived weakness, not one who overshadows the nominee. And for him, his whole change message gets really bogged down by going with Clinton. There are other candidates who make a much better match for either of them than they do for each other.
And I am loving this way more than I thought I would. I was really disappointed to see Howard Dean say that if there is no nominee by mid-April, the party will try to “work something out.” He really doesn’t want a brokered convention. I would love a brokered convention! Just for the drama.
I am starting to hear all this chatter from the punditocracy that the close race on the Democratic side means Democrats are so divided that the losers in the nominating process may just stay home. And I really don’t see any evidence of that whatsoever, with the exception for a few hardcore Hillary haters.
The bad news is that most of the Republicans I know who were thinking about voting Democratic this time around are really happy with McCain as their nominee and probably will stay in the fold.
obama can win a general election. he cannot be clinton’s vp, which would be dum anyway. in state after state, once he gets to talking in that state, votes start flying out for him (and donations, and support).
he’s got the gift of Bill Clinton and Huckabee, but without Bill Clinton or Huckabee’s creepy factor.
the clintons have no more ability to dispense favors left. again and again, ‘experienced’ hillary faills down and doesn’t whip ass in a genuine election challenge.
with all her starting advantages, EVEN lacking obama’s charisma, she should have been winner-take-all level ahead in delegates. 500 or more.
instead she can barely hang on.
and yet people are still nattering about how she ought to take obama on as vp, instead of the other way round (both absurd, but the first one is stunning in its whiteprivilege assumptiveness).
in a general election, if she decides to just rip the party to shreds and backroom-deal her way to a nomination, guess what? mccain gets to be prez-0-dent.
obama is showing that people are TIRED of the ‘backroom-dealing’. they are sick of that kind of ‘experience’. for hillary to even get the nom, she’d have to spit in the faces of the rising hordes of voters who now see that they can count in the political process.
they’d see that despite favoring obama, mrs. clinton backroom-dealt her way into a nom over the voice of what the people wanted in favor of what SHE wanted and nothing more. not a winning strategy, that.
mccain would just handily parlay his maverick status into a bloody but solid victory in 08.
a vote for hillary is pretty literally a vote for mccain 08.
True, Gwangung. In most Asian cultures, the home (and family budget) are women’s domain. And of course there is the respect for older people, as well. So Senator Clinton is not pushing any buttons there. When it comes right down to it, the rabid Hillary-haters are mostly white; and white women are supposed to be young, pretty, and demure.
I sincerely doubt that the Asian or Latino voting bloc will go for McCain in a big way. I’ve heard a few Latinos say that they will vote for the man; but most have been well turned off by Republican policies and are solidly behind the Dem ticket. Meanwhile, McCain used a racial slur in one of his earlier campaign - he was referring to his Vietnamese captors, but still, using the word “gook” didn’t endear him to most Asian voters.
As it is, Obama’s victory in Kansas and Nebraska may mean that all this is moot; he is likely to trounce McCain in November no matter what. And you can bet your bippy that if it comes down to Obama-Huckabee (!) that a lot of the Bloomberg/Schwarzenegger type Repubs will either sit it out or support Obama - that Southern Baptist Jeebus-freak populist dog just don’t hunt in these parts.
great post.
i actually wrote a warning about this (what was apparently coined as “The Tweety Effect”) in november of ‘07.