This is by way of observing that it is going to take a really long time--if ever--for liberal and progressive white men to grasp what is going on. If dKos is any example we are going to have to endure a whole lot of white male gnashing of teeth, sobbing, special pleading, and complaints about how dull she is, and how frumpy, and how stiff. And that's just from people who are going to support her! As for the Bernie dead enders they are even worse--I could pull up some of these comments but what would be the point? They go like this "I'm a white man who lives in a safe blue city in a safe blue state and I am personally offended by drones/climate change/rumor about Hillary/wall street and I must withold my <strikethrough>precious bodily fluid</strikethrough> from her and her minions. You people--you other people--do what you have to do but I never will. You can imagine this said either from behind the walls of a pillow fort or from atop a fainting couch.
I dislike both types--both the ones who are grudgingly giving her the vote, or acting like its just tacky to be uncool enough to vote for her wholeheartedly, and the Bernie or Buster single issue voters. These people are relying on a kind of political herd immunity. They are like people who don't get a vaccine that might save their life from an epidemic illness and who simply count on everyone else getting the vaccine to lower the danger to themselves. They know that Hillary and Bill and Obama and everyone else in the Democratic Party is going to raise the money, fight the fight, do the GOTV, and then fight to run the damned country regardless of their single vote. And they either believe that Trump getting in won't affect them, or that the rest of us will work our hearts out for Hillary and get her over the finish line and we will keep fighting for progressive causes and they can bitch from the sidelines.
Years ago, when I was considering moving my family to Canada to save my children from having to grow up complicit in Bush's war crimes, someone on a blog pointed out that doing so was abandoning everyone else in the country, who couldn't move, to their fate. That withdrawing might be possible, it might be convenient, it might be good for me and mine--but it was an abdication of my responsibility as a citizen and as a neighbor to all those who couldn't afford to move. I have never forgotten this post, and this insight has informed my political attitude ever since. I have to vote, and I have to vote in every election, not just on my own behalf, or on that of my children, but for people who are not able to vote here (non citizens in the US, the rest of the world, people in the US who are being denied their vote). And I have to vote, specifically, with their needs in mind. Because there are many of them, and they come in many kinds--my vote can never be all about any single issue. Certainly its not just going to be about the Oligarchs or the economy.
In this election season so far we have seen women and African American voters come out and vote solidly for Hillary Clinton. She is running an intersectional, progressive, campaign that puts women's issues, and LGBTQ issues, and AA issues, front and center. That is the fact of the matter. People are telling us the are experiencing existential dread--I know I am!--if Donald Trump gets in because he is going to be horrible for all the kinds of people who make up this coalition. And yet I see things like this all the time:
Democrats and progressives would be wise to listen to Tiabbi’s warning, but they won’t. The nomination of Hillary Clinton and her Wall Street coterie will only be another 4 years of paying lip service to progressive reform. Worse, it will stunt the youthful idealism that Bernie tapped into, which is the future of the party.
Rather than treating Trump’s destruction of the GOP as an opportunity to continue the status quo, the Democrats should learn a lesson from it. The old, toothless GOP is gone, and in its place is something far more formidable — a re-awakening American nationalism and an awareness that the American worker has gotten a raw deal from corporate globalism. Rather than dismissing Donald Trump with tired accusations of bigotry , why not address some of the real issues he has raised affecting national security and the economy? Bernie was trying to do this, and Clinton, for many reasons, is incapable of it. Ironically, with Bernie gone, the best outcome for progressives may be a Trump victory in November.
This guy may be a troll but there are plenty of others, including Matt Taibbi who he is riffing off of, who make essentially the same argument. I think it is because right wing has done a great job of causing people to forget 8 years of Bush. And the left wing has helped by concentrating fire on Obama and on Clinton rather than on Bush and the Republicans. Obama was castigated for not being able to fix all of Bush's mistakes, Hillary for being SOS to Obama (and thus part of the establishment cabal) and for participating in Bush's Iraq War. But everything else that happened under Bush--the economic dislocation, the racism, the war on women is ignored in this story as it is ignored as it is happening right now. We can't let the soi disant progressive left or last bastion of hipster white boy power do to Hillary Clinton what they have happily done to Barack Obama. That is: support them (whether weakly or strongly) during the campaign when it is expedient to do so and then sabotage them immediately upon election.
So I'm going to go back to this notion of herd immunity and beg people to think before they selfishly vote their ego. For herd immunity to work, for the most vulnerable parts of our body politic to be protected from disease, everyone who can get the vaccine must get the vaccine. Babies, children, old people, pregnant women, sick people--these are all people who have compromised or vulnerable immune systems. Often they can't get the vaccine. They rely on herd immunity to protect them from epidemic diseases sweeping through society. Anyone who is healthy enough to receive the vaccine owes it to everyone around them to take it. Anyone who has the freedom to vote, the ability to vote, the luxury to vote owes it to the rest of us to vote in this election, for the Democratic nominee. The health and safety of the entire country depends on it.
Cross posted at I Spy With My Little Eye
52 comments:
Hell yeah, indeed. Great post.
Little to add to what nolo said, except my usual historical note to the effect that there were plenty of puritopians in the 1930s and 40s who thought FDR was a corrupt corporatist tool and prayed to the Weltgeist for the destruction of the US to hasten the world revolution. Also what you note about the casual dismissal of the entire African American community (that they're deluded, that they don't know how to vote right as a race, no different really from Trump on the incapacity of Judge Curiel) needs to be said a lot. Great post indeed.
Fail.
The real problem is it's difficult to get people to vote for someone who they think will sell them down the river for political expediency. Right or wrong, they feel that way because she's married to a guy who did exactly that for 8 years.
Well said. The saddest result from those who want to wave a wand and have a perfect society is abandoning and throwing stones at the rest of trying to just
stop the crazies. Some signs that caught my eye said (more of less) "Don't tell me Congress won't pass Bernie's plans, get a new Congress." That sort of nonsense, my friends, has seriously damaged the argument that we are smarter and more rational.
Can you explain why the vote for Secretary Clinton has to be an "enthusiastic" vote? A hold-your-nose vote counts as much as the former.
Yes! YES! Abso-frikkin-lutely!
Standing ovation. Great post.
This is in response to Roger and Susan. 1) Whether it is difficult to get Americans out to vote or not says nothing about how they need to vote if their interests are to be protected. The whole idea that the Democrats are at fault because some people don't like Hillary Clinton is, to put it mildly, the cry of the wounded asshole. In reality there are no perfect candidates that everyone loves. No candidate is going to come over to your house and massage your prostate or whatever else Roger needs to get off his ass and vote for the most progressive candidate in the race. That's right: Hillary Clinton is the most progressive candidate in the race between Hillary Clinton and Trump. Incredible! But true. If Roger and his ilk are disappointed and can't find it in their hearts to get out and vote to protect the Obama coalition and the gains of the Obama years that is all on Roger and his asshole friends.
As for Susan, 2) its true that a vote is a vote is a vote. I'll take a grudging vote for Clinton over someone sitting at home sucking her thumb and clutching her purity shawl. But that isn'twhat politics is about, and that kind of attitude can't really help us seize control of the country and enable a great Democratic Administration to take the Presidency and run the country. Hillary Clinton is a perfectly good, talented, hard working, progressive, managerial style candidate to run the Presidency competently. She has a great track record of trying to do good and succeeding wherever possible. What more do you fucking want? You aren't going to get god emperor Bernie and you aren't going to get (and didn't deserve) near godlike Barack. Instead, right here in the realm of the real, you are going to get a pretty great, good hearted, hard working, woman who is going to try as hard as she can to run the country to the benefit of everyone, not just the noisiest parts of the self proclaimed far left.
We can support her and every other democrat and progressive running in every race, or we can continue to shoot ourselves in the feet by undermining our own political actors, sniping, backbiting, and attacking them when they try to actually do politics and governance. There are hundreds of things--thousands of things--that our next President is going to have to manage just to keep this country from backing into disaster. Its invisible to the hysterics of the far left who have their eyes fixed so firmly on the moon that they can't see the tide creeping in to drown them. I don't take for granted that Hillary can win the election with people on our own side playing snotty, elitist, "nice tune but I can't dance to it" special snowflake. I mean--I think she can because the Obama coalition is specifically not made up of such special people. But if white/elitist/men and women like Roger and Susan want to keep bitching about how everyone else in the country is compromised, especially the hispanics and AA and female voters choosing Clinton, they can go right ahead and bitch themselves right into irrelevance.
Sorry, that should have been Sharon Winfield, not Susan. Can't edit my own response.
Obama was a centrist technocrat who talked about working with the Republicans. He pandered to them for far too long and ruined many of his chances because of it.
"Obama was castigated for not being able to fix all of Bush's mistakes,". Republicans complained he didn't fix everything. Progressives complained he shut them out and ignored their main initiatives. Ledbetter, Don't ask don't tell, coma were all important, but relatively easy. The hard ones, Obama gave up too soon and too easy.
Hillery is a right of center bureaucrat who is making progressive noises. At least she knows the Republicans are evil and out to get her and destroy the country. It took Obama a long time to figure that out.
Seems like OK reasons to vote for her same as Obama. Just have to hope for the best on banks, payday loans, gitmo, the environment, justice reform, pot legalization, expanded eitc, etc and so on.
Well, we have to disagree, Joey Blau, since the ACA was the most monumental and complicated lift for any President since LBJ, with a much more difficult congressional landscape, and it began the process of fulfilling a multi generational progressive struggle for health care for all. As for progressives complaining that he shut them out--fuck them. If progressives had turned out in 2010 we wouldn't have lost the house and we could have done whatever we wanted. Not all politics is presidential politics. Most of it, in fact, is based in the House and the Senate.
Hillary is not a "center bureaucrat" she is a center left politician who is transactional and who is running an intersectional campaign focused on satisfying the distinct needs of a wide and complex coalition of voters. Bill, and Hillary, and Obama have always been as left as their voting base and their legislatures have allowed them to be. Hillary and Obama, in particular, have been farther left than their legislatures have allowed them to be and that is why they have major failures, as well as successes, under their belts. On his best fucking day Bernie Sanders wishes he could have moved major legislation like Hillarycare and had it fail. He's never even come close to that kind of consequential legislating.
Also, of course--Bernie voted against closing Gitmo and prevented Obama from doing so. Thanks Bernie!
That's OK, I realized that you just made a typo.
I'm not sure that doing "politics" correctly means that I have to cast a vote for HRC that's covered in admiration for the Secretary. I'm in my mid-50s, I've been voting in general and mid-term elections for almost 30 years, my warm feelings add no extra value to that vote.
Well said.
I LOOOOOOOVES mw some aimai!
YOU ROCK!!!!!
Every day, there a millions of people in this country, and billions around the world, who are lucky to have to choose between "the lesser of two evils."
Sometimes, no choice, but evil!
First, Hillary is not evil - not unless you've listened to a quarter of a century of REICH-WING propaganda and bullshit.
So, there's the end of THAT part of your stupid argument!
Second, as aimai says, this election isn't about YOU!
Do you want to erase all of the progressive change under Obama - yeah, I know, Liberal Purity Police, he's also a lesser evil.
OY!
Do you want to doom women to back alley abortions?
Do you want to have immigrants - documented, or not - hounded? How about having them shipped out of this country in cattle cars and old buses?
Do you want to have LGBT folks ostracized and possibly physically hurt - let alone mentally?
Do you want to even further the right to vote for "those people" - which is everyone who's not older, white, and male?
Do you want non-believers, Muslims, and people of other faiths forced to follow the new rules of our uber-"Christian" bigoted morons? Want a Theocracy? Sit this election out.
All of this, and more, will be on the heads of people who, unlike some of the better-off Sandersista's and others who loathe Hillary!
Sure, it's no big deal to you.
Vote for tRUMP or Stein (whom I happen to like)!
No big deal, right?
THAT'LL send a message to the Democrats!
Here's what you do with your "message:"
Stick that message in a bottle, and shove it up your fucking asses!
To all of the tender special snowflakes who wouldn't want to soil their minds or hands voting for Hillary, GET OVER YOURSELVES, AND GROW THE FUCK UP!!!
This election isn't about YOU!
IT'S ABOUT ALL OF US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That line about voting, should have read, 'Do you want to even further LIMIT the right to vote for "those people" - which is everyone who's not older, white, and male?'
Hey Victor, thanks.
And Hey, Sharon, I'm sorry if you received some splash damage from some unbottled rage. I am quite a cynical person, myself, and I well remember Clinton fatigue and my extreme annoyance with Bill for his many unforced errors during his two terms. But Hillary isn't Bill and I have come around to grasping that the Presidency just isn't a place for people to put their romantic faith in a pure and perfect leader. Not only are we doomed to disappointment but we really aren't worthy of the incredible people who put themselves out to take the job. Maybe, like a lot of people, I came to see Bill as deserving of some of the shit flung at him but I will never, ever, forgive white progressives for the shit they threw, and still throw, at Barack Obama, Michelle, and their family while the entire family were literally risking their lives to serve the country. And I see the same thing all over again with Hillary. She's a hard working woman who put herself on the line to run for the Senate, worked her ass off, nearly won the presidency, worked her ass off, worked as SOS and then ran a historic and comprehensive primary to win the nomination. There aren't many people who can do that. And I think we are about to elect her to the Presidency and then be dragged backward by people carping and bitching because she isn't Rosa Luxembourg or Emma Goldman.
"Do you want to erase all of the progressive change under Obama..."
Hell no. I want to expand it, and kill the sops to business like the (not at all free) trade programs he's tried to push.
--------------
What do you mean by it's not about me? You just charged me with the downfall of civilization because I want more progressive representation in government. It might not be ALL about me, but your contribution to the discussion makes it sound like this here snowflake IS pretty special.
I'm tired of being told how valuable my vote is, from the same people telling me to give it away for less value than it's worth. My labor and my vote are the only things of value I have, I'm not going to just give them away on the cheap.
How do you "give away your vote?" What does that even mean. Your vote is, of course, not the "only thing of value you have." Your energy, your wit, your inspiration, your shoe leather are all of much more importance than your vote. Plenty of Felons can't vote, lots of AA people are shut out of voting, all undocumented immigrants can't vote, my teenager can't vote but all of them can be politically active and can work to drag this country to the left. Withholding your vote, if you can vote, from the only party that is going to seriously fight this election, is just counterproductive. Its cutting off your nose to spite my face. But go ahead and do it if you have to. Just don't think that you are acting in a politically meaningful way to advance the causes you like. As Rachel Maddow said, if you vote third party or write in a non existent candidate, you are " like someone who went to the grocery store and it was out of your favorite beer, so you decided to drink bleach."
Who is this aimai and is he/she talented enough to write a shaming condescension to all the Black Agenda Report and for that matter N o I folks who refuse to get on board for a American feminist capitalist who thrills to killing Arab socialist anti-imperialist leaders and will have US troops occupy Afghanistan until the last Afghani woman becomes a Westernized graduate of some Kabul ersatz Wellesley?
Victor
" Hillary is not evil - not unless you've listened to a quarter of a century of REICH-WING propaganda and bullshit."
Ian Welsh and Chris Hitchens among myriad others could have cared less about that which was not needed to establish Clinton's negatives.
Great post, aimai. +1.
@KenRight: You're not a native English speaker, right? Or are you a bot?
Quoting Tbogg from 2008:
________________________
Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild, the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie Baking Apple-cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. They have a big picnic with cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing Magic Wishing Rocks into the Well of Laughter, Comity, and Good Intentions. Afterward they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar.
You don’t live there.
Grow the fuck up.
______________________
https://shadowproof.com/2008/02/25/your-mumia-sweatshirt-wont-get-you-into-heaven-anymore/
Sadly, the lovely graphic that illustrated the post has gone missing.
They sound just like the "radicals" i knew in 60's and 70's who wound up voting for Reagan. "We demand Safe Spaces on Campus and they must be Segregated. How else can we feel truly safe?"
Hahahahaha Christopher "Iraq is a war to be proud of" Hitchens. (Loved his work on Mother Teresa but it was sadly downhill after he fell in with Bush and Blair.) Speaking of thrilling to killing Arabs.
@Yastreblyansky: A Hitchens quote relevant to Afghanistan:
"Cluster bombs are perhaps not good in themselves," said the writer, who supported the war. "But when they are dropped on identifiable concentrations of Taliban troops, they do have a heartening effect."
From here:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2011/1216/10-of-the-more-memorable-quotes-from-journalist-and-author-Christopher-Hitchens/Hitchens-on-the-war-on-terror # 8 of 10
I can't say I care what Christopher Hitchens or Ian West say about anything.
Rude Pundit dropped a post a couple of days ago that comes at the same point from a different angle. For those who missed it:
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2016/06/regarding-hillary-clintons-nomination.html
"... if you can't understand how big this is, how important this is, if that gets lost while you're still feeling the Bern or just can't get past that icky feeling that has been injected into you by decades of right-wing media, then you are missing out. You are missing actual history, as important as nominating the first African American, as game-changing as allowing same sex couples to wed."
As on so much so often, I stand with Victor on this.
For months here, on and off, I've been saying pretty much was Aimai says here, just no as well-organized or as well period.
Lots folks forget that in 2008 it took HRC a while to adjust and find her voice, but when she did, she ran the rest of that primary season pretty much even with the dude who's turned out to be the best POTUS since first half-term LBJ, so really the best since Truman at least. But in 2008, we could only guess at and hope for that, so it really tends to diminish the fact that Dems had a very unusual choice in 2008, a reverse Hobson's really.
I've done it here enough to be boring about it, but everything I run into some online poster I don't know who's singing the Clinton blues and wingeing out what seems to me RW propaganda and ignorance, I tend to say, Go to Wikipedia and check her out: she was a big deal BEFORE she and Bill met, and she was a bigger deal than Bill for a decade or more after.
It's ABOUT FREAKING TIME we elected a woman president, and since we've got the happy coincidence of that plus the best VERY ARGUABLY the candidate for this role ever, PLUS no question in my mind the best qualified candidate among the 2 kajillion or so who took a run at it this cycle, I see electing her as something worth fighting for.
Thank you for this, Feud T. Exactly. This is a hugely important election for the US, not only because its for the first female President, but its also the first election in which we have a chance of tacking eight years onto an eight year Democratic Presidency. Its the first election in which we have the chance to follow an incredible, historically important, Presidency like the Obama Presidency with an ally and supporter of his policies, and also with someone who is very well positioned within the civil service, administration, and the Senate to know how things work and how to get things done. Its a classic example of the "routinization of charisma" when a Charismatic leader, carried in on a wave of enthusiasm, has to replace himself with someone who promises simply to buckle down and carry on the work.
Few people remember that both Bill and Obama had to come into the White House after the Republican party lost, and lost ugly, something they thought of as their birthright. Both of them had to contend with an extremely hostile press corps and a White House staff that wasn't ready for a Democrat, and both had to learn the ropes of DC politics on the fly. Bill and Hillary were attacked and pilloried from the get go, the staff and friends they brought with them attacked, slandered, and (in one case) brought to suicide. Obama's Chicago friends were attacked and IIRC Michelle's first Chief of Staff was forced out, as well as many of Obama's picks like Van Jones. Meanwhile Obama hired someone very cagey and experienced to work with him in the Senate, and brought that guy over to work in the White House. It was a rough beginning for both Bill Clinton and Obama.
Hillary and her adminisration have a once in a lifetime chance to hit the ground running, albeit against incredible Republican obstruction and a probable Republican House. But at least they know the ropes thoroughly, she can build on the staff and the civil service appointees that Obama brought in.
At this point in US governmental history the ability to run the Government in a competent way is a huge and important qualification for this job. Gigantic. Familiarity with foreign governments? Equally huge. Its just too big a job for a neophyte, an outsider, or someone, whether Bernie or Bush II, who had to rely on other people to know what to do, who to call, or how to get something done.
Good to know that people who dare to "grudgingly" vote for Clinton are somehow equivalent to people who refuse to vote for Clinton. How exactly am I relying on others for "herd immunity" if I vote for her?
@Feud @aimai: yes.
There is indeed a great deal of herd mentality going on this time 'round.
Nice see you here again, a. Well done.
Meanwhile, over on Elizabeth Warren's Facebook page, the Bernie or bust herd is stampeding furiously through the comments, shrieking spittle-flecked outrage at their former idol's betrayal of all that is good and true and progressively holy. If my eyes were rolling more than metaphorically they'd have corkscrewed out of their sockets and gone sproinging across the room.
Great post, aimai. Perfect metaphor.
I went off on Jill Stein on Twitter for talking about how "the elites" backed Clinton while "the people" were for Bernie--in other words, "the elites" are 55% of the voters in the party (including an overwhelming majority of African-Americans) while "the people" are 45% (overwhelmingly white). This mindset is as self-defeating as it is offensive (duh: Bernie lost), but I don't see it going away.
Oh, and aimai -- so glad to see you again! I've missed you terribly. So nice to be able to read an excellent article like this, or one of Steve's, ponder it, organize a comment in my mind -- then scan through the comment thread and simply post "What aimai said!"
Tom Hilton, those people you describe put me in mind of Linus's cri de couer: "I love mankind, it's people I can't stand!"
McSchwanger said...
Good to know that people who dare to "grudgingly" vote for Clinton are somehow equivalent to people who refuse to vote for Clinton. How exactly am I relying on others for "herd immunity" if I vote for her?
6:17 PM Delete
Obviously, you aren't equivalent to people who don't vote for Clinton. But this kind of whininess is why people are sick and tired of the ex berniers. You don't get a cookie for showing up, either. The prize for getting out to vote for a candidate once every four years is getting to get up off your ass and vote for lots of other not very charismatic, local, to you unimportant candidates at the Midterms! Yes, you have just won the chance to keep participating in electoral politics! Thanks for playing.
1. Lawsuits against the Clinton Campaign's Criminal Election Fraud in half the states are still in progress. I don't even care that those emails showing that she sold arms to the Saudis or that her State Department funded ISIS, although plenty of people around the world and in this country do.
2. Clinton's foundation made $billions from the industries TPP is designed to throw us under the bus for. I find it hard to believe that she'd go back on that, as she claims. This is my Bernie-or-bust-single-issue. We survived a bush presidency, we can survive a Trump presidency. I know he's just running to scare you all into voting for Clinton (and I see it is working) but once he's in office, I'm quite certain the bankers will give him a big check to keep him in line. I agree that we could get a sucky supreme court for a another 40 years.
3. THERE ARE MORE OF US THAN THERE ARE OF YOU. Get in line behind Bernie to support OUR country. You will say that "Fox news (or CNN, owned by Time Warner, one of Hillary's biggest supporters) says it ain't so". You're right, they do. They're lying. This will be proven in court. Already the California count is showing significant changes, for instance.
4. Most of us see that Hillary Clinton is owned by the same bankers who pressured Obama to lobby congress to do things such as insert section 1021 into the 2012 NDAA. They're preparing to dump the dollar and kill us all. Or maybe that's just their contingency plan, whatever. They're interested in their war games, and not our survival. Not yours, either.
I understand that your comfortable and you don't feel the need to rock the boat. Many of us are comfortable. But many more aren't. And, as you correctly point out, this is for ALL OF US, not just those who are comfortable.
I dunno aimai. I can't for someone who doesn't make me feel good.
/snark
Honestly tho I think there's something to that. Clinton doesn't make young white males excited, but they can't rationally articulate why. So they have to parrot Republican talking points.
1) Frivolous lawsuits! Yeah, that's the ticket! That'll prove that jet fuel can't melt steel beams!
2) Her official position is inconsistent with my conspiracy theory, therefore she's lying!
3) If there are more of you than us, it's too bad more of you didn't vote. (btw, Clinton's lead is holding up in the California count.)
4) Yes, obviously the government is poisoning us with chemtrails.
5) You are a fucking idiot, and you are cordially invited to fuck off and die.
But getting the ACA passed was a big mess. Obama let the gang of six string things along for over a year while talking single payer off the table to start. It was built with the insurance companies in mind, and how much government money could be funneled their direction.
The famous stupid line of Pelosi's, that it thrown in our face forever, "we have to pass the bill to see what is in it" was a direct result of Obama kowtowing to Senate Republicans. Ahhhhh abortion money!! Ahhhhh birth control, state exchanges, opt outs, blah blah. I know it was a great achievement.
But Obama should have forced it through in the first six months and niot wait for Kennedy to die. Make the added capital gains tax 5%! But no.. He was fooled by the repubes into thinking he could get a historic 80 votes!! Woo woo! Obama was bamboozled.
"If progressives had turned out in 2010 we wouldn't have lost the house and we could have done whatever we wanted"
Annnddd.. Obama told the progressives to get lost after 2008. We got this... OFA was going to run everything. Give us your lists and go home. That was Obama's message to progressives. And then he sat on his ass and never defended the ACA and let the tea party rise without a fight... Why? To protect blue dog assholes, who lost the most anyway.
And to your third point, make a left right line and Mark the center, and then mark down all the things that HRC has actually done. The laws she supported, the wars, the money she took, the friends she has, the details of the things she finished.
How many marks left or right?
But I voted two for Obama because why? Grumpy McCain and idiot girl? Moneybags Mitt and the Big Lie sidekick? What choice was left? And now we are opposed by Trump, who defies easy labels because he is all over the map! Closest I can find is "ER ist weider da"
@NeverBen: y'know, I couldn't remember Torvalds having said any such thing.
I kid you not: that's how I read your comment.
Until now, when I remembered that there's more than one Linus.
@TomHilton (1853): elites. yeah, because nothing sez "elite" like "a majority of the voters". Damned voters ... they just don't know their own best interests ... not like *I* do.
@aimai (2019): "prize"? "price"? Not sure what you're saying.
@Unknown (2043): What Tom Hilton said at 2118.
@JoeyBlau (2230): this is too stoopid. Green Lantern theory of politics, Tinkerbelle theory of politics, whatevs, sheeple. As best I can remember, Nobummahcare snuck in through a very narrow window, because the Replicant Party decided that legislation requires a 60 vote supermajority to be legit.
And the LameStream Media sucked it up, so now a "majority" is 60-40. 59-41 is not a "majority". Thanks, Nova Pravda.
Franken was sworn in March 2009. Kennedy died August 2009.
Ornstein on the early history of NobummaCare:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/the-real-story-of-obamacares-birth/397742/
"When the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy was filled via a January 2010 special election by Republican Scott Brown, Democrats lost their 60th vote—and the McConnell strategy meant that there was no way, no matter what changes Democrats were willing to make in the final package, that there would be a single Republican vote to get them past the filibuster hurdle. Hence, the fallback to using reconciliation to bypass the filibuster in the Senate, and the inability to smooth out the rough edges and awkward language in the final bill that was enacted."
So natch, "I blame Obama". As you blame Obama. Because Obama should have passed legislation 59-41, no trubba.
Or perhaps "Canada".
Whatevs. I have some waterfront property in New York which I believe would be of interest to you as an investment.
Huge Aimai fanboi here, so of course: hurrah! But seriously: why can't you give us this every day? This is what I've been hungering for.
Finally someone brings up vaccination and free-riders. This is my family situation, I think, people who won't soil their hands to vote for the lesser evil but rely on the rest of us to avert calamity, hiding in the herd.
Whether they're actively signalling their exceptional virtue or privately caressing their consciences, they're not helping those they profess to support. I keep singing, "Which side are you on?" but old labor songs don't work; they're rarely pro-union, notwithstanding their outrage over economic inequality.
There's a reason that much of the Democratic coalition favors Clinton: not all of us are white males, and not all of our issues can be collected into a single bucket.
"How do you "give away your vote?" What does that even mean."
It means my vote is valuable (I'm told if I don't vote for HRC, Trump ends civilization!!). If a politician wants my vote, they need to earn it. Voting for someone who will not promise to act in a politically meaningful way to advance the causes I like, is giving away my vote.
I just want HRC to emphatically denounce her husband's "unforced errors"*, and promise she won't sign-off on anything as stupid. If she's as awesome as you think she is, that shouldn't be too tough a task.
*BTW, I love the euphemism "unforced errors". Sounds way better than "doing the work of Conservative Republicans and Wall Street" in regards to welfare reform, the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, NAFTA, etc.
@jim Snyder.. And yet.. Obama chose Max Baucus to be his point man in Spring 2009. and the twists and turns dragged on for months.. and the conservadems that had such control were almost as bad as the Republicans.
There was a window and Obama was naive. He was seduced by "bipartisanship" and pushed progressives to the side. Maybe it never could have happened, but he refused to pass a bill in the house and then send it in a reconciliation bill right at the start. He didn't want a 51 vote victory. In the end, after building up the opposition and watering down the bill, that's what he got anyway.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamasdeal/etc/cron.html
Hi Victor,
I think you have a reading comprehension problem. I didn't say that I wasn't going to vote for the Secretary, but that I wasn't going to do cartwheels down the sidewalk of my polling place on my way to vote.
There really isn't any valid comparison between the two general election candidates. Trump is obviously unqualified for the presidency. Clinton is qualified for the Presidency. I just think that we need a Democratic Party that's less dependent on the largess of the one percent.
So glad the presidential primaries are over.
Sharon,
If I misunderstood your point, I'm sorry.
And I don't have a reeding komprehention problom. Knot that I no ov!
;-)
I have read nothing by Taibbi hinting that a Trump victory might be "the best outcome for progressives." That is a serious accusation.
I really wasn't going to comment, because really Hillary scares me nearly as much as the lunatics around Trump, but comments by @jim snyder and @Joey Blau overcame my reticence. It was not the case that Obama could have passed the ACA by 59 to 41. You seem to have forgotten a little procedural nicety called "the filibuster." It is possoble to pass a bill by a vote of 60 to 40. It is not possible to even have a vote at 59 to 41, at least not while Harry Reid is still protecting the old rule.
Aside from that, I worry about what is going to happen with the legal precedent that Obama established, and then reinforced with the gratuitous killing of Abdulrahman Awlaki, that the President of the United States has the authority to order the execution of American citizens without recourse to the rule of law without giving them a chance to face their accusers, without a chance to present their explanation. I trust Hillary with this legacy only a little more than Trump. Victoria Nuland did not conduct her neo-nazi coup in Ukraine without the knowledge and approval of her superiors. Who promoted Victoria Nuland?
Roher,
You seem to forget that while the original bill was shoehorned into an unrelated house bill and passed the Senate in 2009 with 60 dem votes, it would not have been approved by the house except for the Health care and education reconciliation act of 2010.
That was passed under reconciliation in the Senate with 56 dem votes. So wtf are you going on about? The whole bill could have been done with 51 votes.
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