Why didn't his lead stick in 2012? He was laughed off stage in a matter of weeks. Now he's been on top for months.
One, he doubled down on racism early.
Two, the GOP has a sort of dolchstoßlegende that they were the rightful winners of "government" for the last six years, but that damn Obama stonewalled them unfairly/wasn't the true president/whatever, and that if they'd just elected a real conservative who could get things done they'd have both Congress and POTUS and start realizing their dreams.
They see the "clear, popular outrage" over Obama, the ACA, Iran, Benghazi, etc..., as proof that the nation is just waiting for a real conservative, and that the GOP can't lose this time. They're DUE the presidency. They WERE due the presidency in 2012, and their narrative on why they lost turned anti-immigrant hours after the election. That was the start.
Ted Cruz has denounced some of Trump's crazier stuff, but you'll notice that the RNC hasn't sanctioned him in any way officially, which I think is telling (although I admit I don't understand what the mechanisms for that would be.)
At any rate, Trump is no longer a funny edge case lunatic. He is now a terrifying edge case lunatic with far too much support that seems counter to my wildest expectations of what he could ever have realistically gathered.
I still won't vote for Clinton, but my "protest vote" won't go to Trump or anybody remotely like him.
Ted Cruz said Trump is welcome on his cabinet, and also very specifically and narrowly "disagreed" with his Muslim ban, while in the same breath re-iterated his aim to ban all Islamic refugees from entering the US.
Trump is just the nightmarish avatar of everything the GOP quietly insinuates and suggests all the time. The xenophobia, racism, neo-nazi style fascism is all there under the surface. Trump is throwing it out into the open, which is why the GOP have not come out strongly against him. They want their coded language, they want the white supremecy, they want their madness, but they want plausible deniability. They want to be able to shoot down arguments by suggesting the opposition is misinterpreting things intentionally, while still playing their game.
That's why you haven't heard guys like McConnell saying anything.
Trump is just the nightmarish avatar of everything the GOP quietly insinuates and suggests all the time. The xenophobia, racism, neo-nazi style fascism is all there under the surface. Trump is throwing it out into the open, which is why the GOP have not come out strongly against him.
So far out in the open, in fact, that the (in)famous Stormfront have had to upgrade their servers and hosting, just to deal with the extra traffic.
So you guys aren't looking forward to the biggest landslide since James Madison?
I'm hopefully optimistic. I think whoever the DNC puts up is gonna crush Trump or Cruz, but I'm resignedly depressed that it will be Hillary. I'm not sure our ecosystem can survive another lukewarm US presidency in place of actual progressive leadership. Of course unless the composition of Congress changes drastically soon it won't matter anyway.
So you guys aren't looking forward to the biggest landslide since James Madison?
I'm hopefully optimistic. I think whoever the DNC puts up is gonna crush Trump or Cruz, but I'm resignedly depressed that it will be Hillary. I'm not sure our ecosystem can survive another lukewarm US presidency in place of actual progressive leadership. Of course unless the composition of Congress changes drastically soon it won't matter anyway.
If it's any consolation, Bernie and Hillary do vote together a surprising amount of the time, and having Hillary in the big chair will likely make it easier for Bernie to get some of his pet issues though. We can't always get what we want, but some is better than none.
If Bernie fails to get the nomination his support will evaporate excepting the die-hards, which won't be enough to keep the megaphone going on his "pet issues".
Hillary is not going to push the same message. As "impotent" as the presidency is relative to Congress, it's a hell of a platform for focusing national attention on critical problems. Hillary will happily keep everybody pre-occupied with Syria and ISIS while vital social, economic, ecological, and other issues get lip service or nothing. A Hillary presidency would look nothing like a Bernie presidency.
I think if Bernie gets in, there's a great chance to see a big turnover in the Congress as Bernie has repeatedly, doggedly stuck to the message that such a thing needs to happen in order to clean up this mess we've made of the US.
Hillary gets in, all that just dies. People are fickle and it doesn't take much of a setback to kill enthusiasm. Bernie could actually get people off of their butts.
There's no "it" to die. Obama had a hugely bigger movement behind him and his platform ahead of his first election. That translated into bupkis and the GOP got control of Congress soon thereafter.
The biggest reason Obama is just paying lip service to a lot of those issues right now is Congress. Those issues need Congress to do something.
The best that any candidate running for president can do in 2016 is flip the Senate to a non-filibuster proof majority. House is probably lost for at least another 4 years and the Senate will need two strong cycles to get someone close to 60 senators.
But as you get closer to 60 or even flipping the house you'll have to do that by voting in "Blue Dog" D's in places that normally or lean Republican, we know how that turned out in the 2008-2010 period. Where the roadblock was not just the Republicans but the Conservative Democrats. (who have since been wiped out)
There's no "it" to die. Obama had a hugely bigger movement behind him and his platform ahead of his first election. That translated into bupkis and the GOP got control of Congress soon thereafter.
"soon" being six years after?
Edit: Or are we considering a positional heuristic whereby simply having the ability to filibuster puts the Republicans in "control?"
Obama isn't terribly progressive. His campaign was always fairly vague and generic and where it wasn't, he hasn't delivered with few exceptions. (Although we could endlessly argue about semantics.and degree and barriers.)
Bernie's support is different. It's largely people who feel burned by Obama and see a quantitative difference between him and Bernie. In terms of metrics, he's polling at about where Obama was in his long-shot campaign and has already out fundraised the 2007 Obama primary campaign. So... I don't agree it's all equivalent. I think we're looking through different windows at a very large object and seeing very different things.
If Bernie fails to get the nomination his support will evaporate excepting the die-hards, which won't be enough to keep the megaphone going on his "pet issues".
Who is still a senator, and looking at the numbers for that, he's not going anywhere. It's not like he's completely powerless here, president or nothing.
There's no "it" to die. Obama had a hugely bigger movement behind him and his platform ahead of his first election. That translated into bupkis and the GOP got control of Congress soon thereafter.
"soon" being six years after?
Edit: Or are we considering a positional heuristic whereby simply having the ability to filibuster puts the Republicans in "control?"
Democrats were super energized, yet achieved very little during their short tenure. The Obama wave disengaged pretty quickly.
There's no "it" to die. Obama had a hugely bigger movement behind him and his platform ahead of his first election. That translated into bupkis and the GOP got control of Congress soon thereafter.
"soon" being six years after?
Edit: Or are we considering a positional heuristic whereby simply having the ability to filibuster puts the Republicans in "control?"
Democrats were super energized, yet achieved very little during their short tenure. The Obama wave disengaged pretty quickly.
Very true. He had about six months where he could have signed off on a bill saying all Republicans had to enter the chamber dressed like this: And Republicans could have done jack shit to stop it, but they got nothing done in that time.
I'm used to the "Bernie can't get arrested" thing. Everybody said the same thing about Obama and he was far more milque toast than Bernie and didn't even come close to having his political record.
What I don't understand is the Hillary love. She's absolutely disgusting.
I think you're misinterpreting Hillary pragmatism as love. That said, I think you also dislike her way more than she deserves, at least compared to other politicians.
I agree that her record isn't terrible relative to other politicians. What makes me hate her is the faux progressivism, which is the same reason I dislike Obama. She's a career politician and nothing else.
(And yeah, Bernie is also a career politician but he's also not an opportunistic narcissist.)
My memory contradicts their account, but all right.
Unelectable was used to describe Obama all through the primaries. Not by Dens generally, but it certainly happened.
No I'm not gonna Google for clippings so you can certainly believe WaPo on this if you want to.
They're very specifically framing it for one. It's true that not many people called Clinton inevitable in 2007. What they said was that Obama wasn't electable. Very few people felt this was due to Clinton.
Are we going to have this fight every time Muppet posts something?
At this point I want Bernie to get the nod and win the general, just so Muppet and other Sanders supporters can watch their hopes and dreams die in the fire that is Beltway Politics.
Because there is no escaping that, and any politician that claims otherwise is either a liar or an idiot. Barring an immediate, existential threat (or the belief of one), nothing can overcome the Beltway, and that's on purpose. Our country has intentionally created an ugly, human, political system with moving parts. Egos need to be assuaged and entrenched powers need to be appeased to get anything done.
In recent memory, only 9/11 was able to create that kind of change, and that gifted us with too much bullshit to bother listing. It was a perfectly timed event that saved a flagging presidency, the sort of transcendent, grab the bull by its horns moment we're unlikely to see again.
People bitch about Obama all the time, that Candidate Obama is vastly different than President Obama. Those people don't seem to realize that working in Washington requires cutting deals and making compromises to get shit done. Hope® and Change® sound great in a stump speech, but pithy words said on the campaign trail don't translate into results once in office.
That's the nature of the job. Presidential nominees should be people who can work in that environment, who have the knowledge and connections to bring just enough people together to get things done, regardless of whether the individual can pass an ideological purity test. For that reason, the worst thing that could happen to Sanders and his movement would be to win. The betrayal that people felt over Obama's transformation from Candidate to President would be nothing compared with what those who "feel the Bern" would experience once they were to see the transformation their Progressive Jesus would have to undergo.
Well we could definitely go with cynical acceptance of the status quo and pretend that stubbornly insisting it can't be changed is pragmatism and not laziness or cowardice.
I remember the comment being that Obama should wait 4 to 8 years to run, Because he was "young" compared to the others running. You don't hear that comment on Sanders obviously :-p
Comments
Two, the GOP has a sort of dolchstoßlegende that they were the rightful winners of "government" for the last six years, but that damn Obama stonewalled them unfairly/wasn't the true president/whatever, and that if they'd just elected a real conservative who could get things done they'd have both Congress and POTUS and start realizing their dreams.
They see the "clear, popular outrage" over Obama, the ACA, Iran, Benghazi, etc..., as proof that the nation is just waiting for a real conservative, and that the GOP can't lose this time. They're DUE the presidency. They WERE due the presidency in 2012, and their narrative on why they lost turned anti-immigrant hours after the election. That was the start.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/11/with-some-abstentions-pennsylvania-republicans-welcome-donald-trump-in-new-york/
At any rate, Trump is no longer a funny edge case lunatic. He is now a terrifying edge case lunatic with far too much support that seems counter to my wildest expectations of what he could ever have realistically gathered.
I still won't vote for Clinton, but my "protest vote" won't go to Trump or anybody remotely like him.
That's why you haven't heard guys like McConnell saying anything.
Hillary is not going to push the same message. As "impotent" as the presidency is relative to Congress, it's a hell of a platform for focusing national attention on critical problems. Hillary will happily keep everybody pre-occupied with Syria and ISIS while vital social, economic, ecological, and other issues get lip service or nothing. A Hillary presidency would look nothing like a Bernie presidency.
I think if Bernie gets in, there's a great chance to see a big turnover in the Congress as Bernie has repeatedly, doggedly stuck to the message that such a thing needs to happen in order to clean up this mess we've made of the US.
Hillary gets in, all that just dies. People are fickle and it doesn't take much of a setback to kill enthusiasm. Bernie could actually get people off of their butts.
The best that any candidate running for president can do in 2016 is flip the Senate to a non-filibuster proof majority. House is probably lost for at least another 4 years and the Senate will need two strong cycles to get someone close to 60 senators.
But as you get closer to 60 or even flipping the house you'll have to do that by voting in "Blue Dog" D's in places that normally or lean Republican, we know how that turned out in the 2008-2010 period. Where the roadblock was not just the Republicans but the Conservative Democrats. (who have since been wiped out)
Edit: Or are we considering a positional heuristic whereby simply having the ability to filibuster puts the Republicans in "control?"
Bernie's support is different. It's largely people who feel burned by Obama and see a quantitative difference between him and Bernie. In terms of metrics, he's polling at about where Obama was in his long-shot campaign and has already out fundraised the 2007 Obama primary campaign. So... I don't agree it's all equivalent. I think we're looking through different windows at a very large object and seeing very different things.
And Republicans could have done jack shit to stop it, but they got nothing done in that time.
What I don't understand is the Hillary love. She's absolutely disgusting.
(And yeah, Bernie is also a career politician but he's also not an opportunistic narcissist.)
Unelectable was used to describe Obama all through the primaries. Not by Dens generally, but it certainly happened.
No I'm not gonna Google for clippings so you can certainly believe WaPo on this if you want to.
They're very specifically framing it for one. It's true that not many people called Clinton inevitable in 2007. What they said was that Obama wasn't electable. Very few people felt this was due to Clinton.
Because there is no escaping that, and any politician that claims otherwise is either a liar or an idiot. Barring an immediate, existential threat (or the belief of one), nothing can overcome the Beltway, and that's on purpose. Our country has intentionally created an ugly, human, political system with moving parts. Egos need to be assuaged and entrenched powers need to be appeased to get anything done.
In recent memory, only 9/11 was able to create that kind of change, and that gifted us with too much bullshit to bother listing. It was a perfectly timed event that saved a flagging presidency, the sort of transcendent, grab the bull by its horns moment we're unlikely to see again.
People bitch about Obama all the time, that Candidate Obama is vastly different than President Obama. Those people don't seem to realize that working in Washington requires cutting deals and making compromises to get shit done. Hope® and Change® sound great in a stump speech, but pithy words said on the campaign trail don't translate into results once in office.
That's the nature of the job. Presidential nominees should be people who can work in that environment, who have the knowledge and connections to bring just enough people together to get things done, regardless of whether the individual can pass an ideological purity test. For that reason, the worst thing that could happen to Sanders and his movement would be to win. The betrayal that people felt over Obama's transformation from Candidate to President would be nothing compared with what those who "feel the Bern" would experience once they were to see the transformation their Progressive Jesus would have to undergo.