I love that motto for some reason. It cracks me up. That and Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death! Those revolutionaries weren't playing. Oh, Fight or Die was another great one. Been watching the John Adams Bio on HBO. Love the scene where the battered rebels walk by carrying those flags.
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From this morning's NYT
Road Map to Defeat
By BOB HERBERT Published: April 19, 2008 The Democrats are doing everything they can to blow this presidential election. This is a skill that comes naturally to the party. There is no such thing as a can’t-miss year for the Democrats. They are truly gifted at finding ways to lose.
Jimmy Carter managed to win the White House in 1976 by looking pious and riding a wave of anti-Watergate revulsion. After four hapless years, he dutifully handed the keys back to the G.O.P.
Bill Clinton tried hard to lose, with sex scandals and whatnot, during the 1992 campaign. But Ross Perot wouldn’t let him. Mr. Clinton won with a piddling 43 percent of the vote. For eight years, Mr. Clinton tried to throw the presidency away (with sex scandals and whatnot), but he was never able to succeed.
That’s been it for the party for the past 40 years. The Democrats have become so psychologically battered by these many decades in the leadership wilderness that they consider the Clinton years, during which the president was impeached and they lost control of both houses of Congress, to have been a period of triumph.
Now comes 2008, a can’t-lose year if there ever was one. A united Democratic Party should be able to win this election in a walk. The economy is terrible and getting worse. The Republicans are demoralized. John McCain is no J.F.K. And the country wants to elect a Democrat.
So what are the Democrats doing? The Clintons are running around with flamethrowers, gleefully trying to incinerate the prospects of the party’s leading candidate, Barack Obama. As Bill Clinton put it last month: “If a politician doesn’t want to get beat up, he shouldn’t run for office.”
Senator Obama, for his part, seems to have lost sight of the unifying message that proved so compelling early in his campaign and has stumbled into weird cultural predicaments that have caused some people to rethink his candidacy.
While some of those predicaments raise legitimate concerns (his former pastor, his comments in San Francisco) and some do not (stupid questions about wearing a flag pin), he has allowed them to fester unnecessarily. The way for a candidate to eventually change the subject is to offer policy prescriptions so creative and compelling that they generate excitement among the electorate and can’t be ignored by the press.
Voters want more from Senator Obama. He’s given a series of wonderful speeches, but he has to add more meat to those rhetorical bones. He needs to be clear about where he wants to lead this country and how he plans to do it. That’s how a candidate defines himself or herself.
Instead, Mr. Obama is allowing the Clintons and the news media to craft a damaging persona of him as some kind of weak-kneed brother from another planet, out of touch with mainstream America, and perhaps a loser.
Wednesday night’s debate in Philadelphia may have been a sorry exercise in journalism, but even many of Senator Obama’s own supporters were disappointed with his lackluster performance.
The big issues of our time are being left behind as pettiness and mean-spirited partisanship carry the day.
Voters across the country seem disgusted with this state of affairs. George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson of ABC News are being pilloried for the way they conducted Wednesday’s debate. Hillary Clinton’s disapproval ratings have climbed into a zone that makes it legitimate to wonder whether she could defeat Senator McCain. And much of the excitement and enthusiasm surrounding Mr. Obama’s candidacy has cooled.
That raucous laughter you hear in the background is coming from the likes of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, President Bush and Senator McCain. They can’t believe their good fortune.
The issues still favor the Democrats. More and more Americans are losing their jobs, and many of those still employed are working fewer hours and cashing smaller paychecks. Vacation plans are being curtailed because of declining family income and sky-high gasoline prices. The value of the family home is eroding.
Instead of capitalizing on the political advantages presented by these issues, the Democrats, with their increasingly small-minded approach to this election, are squandering them.
There was always going to be resistance in the U.S. to putting a black person or a woman of any color in the White House. To overcome that built-in resistance, three things are crucially important: new voters have to be brought into the process; the nominee must have an exciting and compelling message; and the party has to be extraordinarily unified behind its standard-bearer.
It’s not too late for the Democrats to pull this off. But there’s already blood on the floor from the nomination fight, and the fight ain’t over. The G.O.P.’s fondest wish is that the Democrats keep doing what they’re doing.
I'd still put my money on Obama winning the nomination and the general; Clinton and McCain simply have too much to overcome. But the Democrats ought to use Wile E. Coyote for their party's symbol instead of a donkey.
Sorry Geoff, I'm skipping one post back to BOB HERBERT. He makes some good points, and I think the Democrats seriously need to get their act together (but I've thought that for a long time).
But let us not overlook the fact that both Obama and Clinton are up against someone who is apparently clueless about the issues, not a particularly clever man and a morally weak character to boot. Flawed as either Democrat may be in certain ways, they can't come close to McCain's shortcomings, and I think it's only fair to bring McCain's strengths and weaknesses into the debate.
Let's pick a recent interview, where McCain made such outrageous statements that your coworkers would jeer you out of the coffee room for being an idiot. Despite that fact that the interviewer neglected to follow-up with any tough or pertinent questions, McCain manages to hang himself anyway. Here, in all its glory is:
John McCain thinks you don't deserve the same healthcare he's got.
A friend provided a summary, which I edited slightly:
Asked "what's wrong with government-run healthcare" (which McCain has) he responds:
"What's wrong with it? Go to Canada. Go to England and you can find out what's wrong with it. Governments don't make the right decisions. Families make the right decisions."
WHAT IS THIS IDIOT TALKING ABOUT!?!?
"Families" are NOT making healthcare decisions in this country. Healthcare decisions are being made by corporations THAT HAVE NO INTEREST IN HEALTHCARE. THAT IS THE PROBLEM!
Where are all these "families" who have the option of making healthcare decisons for themselves and their loved-ones? I don't know any. Everyone I know is just like me -- I get a "choice" of ONE insurance plan -- the one that my employer offers. I can "decide" to have access ONLY to those doctors, medications and procedures that THE INSURANCE COMPANY agrees to pay for. Everything else comes out of my own pocket and my pockets are not deep. And if I got dropped by my insurance company, I would get to "decide" on...paying full price for healthcare or not. In other words, having healthcare or not. That is the only "decision" I would get to make.
What a jerk.
=== Me, again. I will add for myself that I am self-employed and therefore _all_ my healthcare costs come out of my own pocket. I get _no_ assistance or insurance of any kind-- full price for everything (except a true "catastrophic" event that will likely bankrupt me anyway, as it's doing for Americans all over our country-- and yes, I know some of them.)
This ill-informed statement is coming from someone who has had government-provided health care all his life, first from the military and then from the Senate. So he doesn't even have to pay for his care, despite marrying a multi-millionaire which is the only way you can really afford "choice" in this country. Unfortunately, most of us haven't done that.
I enjoyed reading the comments below the (lack of) health care article as well. Several Canadians and Brits (can I say that here?) weighed in with their view. Let me just say, they are not envying our fine system of "feed the insurance companies even more when they are increasingly refusing to pay for any health care whatsoever."
Even better, I found a great link to a true conservative who is bashing McCain as
So Republicans might want to read this one, and see how far short of traditional conservative values this candidate falls.
All you've got to do is choose love. That's how I live it now. I learned a long time ago, I can feed the birds in my garden. I can't feed them all. -- Ringo Starr, Rolling Stone magazine, May 2007
For all I know, Ringo might be a yogi disguised as a drummer! - George Harrison
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"What's wrong with it? Go to Canada. Go to England and you can find out what's wrong with it. Governments don't make the right decisions. Families make the right decisions."
This is about as fatuous as political rhetoric gets, which is saying something. What he's getting at, of course, is the idea that nationalized health care systems are usually underfunded because of accelerating costs and that health care in these countries is therefore rationed: everybody's in the system, but they have to wait. It's an appeal to the Republican Party's anti-government base, notably stripped of any real argument and presented instead as pious twaddle about virtuous families standing against Big Bad Government. The idea is to slide by any politically hazardous substantive debate about how people are to access the health care system and switch the rhetorical ground to whether you want the government to run the health care system or not. The simpler proposition is usually the winning one in politics, and if you can reduce a complex subject to a simple emotionally laden yes-or-no slogan, you'll usually win. That's what McCain is trying to do here.
As I suggested above, I think that Obama's going to be the nominee and that the Democrats will almost surely win in November barring a catastrophic outbreak of stupidity or incompetence on their own part. It's only April, after all. It will take a major terrain-altering event, not internal political rivalries, to change that, I think.
Re: "Socialized medicine" - the root of all evil in terms of health care per the foaming mouth crowd:
Just ask these guys who want to purge our health care system of socialized medicine where they are going to get the $ to pay for the health care that Medicare was covering for them.
Of course the ones who are in favor of doing just that don't worry about not being able to afford health care, they are rolling in it. And those who really need help from "Government Socialized Medicine" like Medicare and Medicaid - they seem to consistently vote against their economic self interests, for reasons I don't fully understand. "He's a good guy, he likes to hunt and has a ranch", or "Hey, he's a war hero!", seem to be good reasons to vote for a candidate to some people. I think this country has a very strong hunter-gatherer bent, to the degree that any candidate that can't pretend to be a (wo)man of the earth has one or two strikes against them from the get go. I guess that is probably very predictable, given the large (though getting smaller?) percentage of voters who live in areas of the country where there isn't a lot of urban opportunity (or blight, depending on one's point of view).
It's taken me a while to get to this point, but I realize now that "factual-based reasoning" (as opposed to the non-factual-based variety) is not considered the gold standard by MANY people in this country. "I've just got a feeling about this" often trumps facts. It's like religion - just because one group of people believe, ahem, strongly that facts have value, doesn't mean that others are ever going to leave their comfort zone because of a few facts here and there. [For more info, please Google: Kansas School Board of Education ... evolution ... theory] !
Obama bowled a 36? Geesh. Give me a candidate who can belt 'em down, and still show up for work - hung over, but still there ... that's strong !
I love John, I love Paul, And George and Ringo, I love them all!
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hehe...i don't get why some people on here actually pay attention to our silly politics when they live in other places! granted, most of the people on this thread are americans, but for those who aren't: why do you know more about the society i live in than i do???
MARTINA was HERE "sit on my face and tell me that you love me" -monty python
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they seem to consistently vote against their economic self interests
This is a crucially important issue for the Democrats going forward, and for the liberal/left generally. There are two points to make here, I think: 1) Economic interests by no means determine how people vote; and 2) People's own notions of their own particular economic interests are almost as varied as the ideologies they embrace, if any.
Let's go in order: the idea that economics determines the whole social order and people's perceptions of their own position within that order is a bad oversimplification of the actual state of things which goes back at least as far as Karl Marx: "all history is the history of class struggle," right? And what defines class? Your economic position. Far too simple a proposition, and it's extraordinary that people still, at whatever intellectual remove, buy it.
Lots of things determine how you think besides "your objective economic position," and you might act on any of them when you get into the voting booth. Anyway, economics might have nothing with to do with how you vote at all in any particular election. Maybe you just voted for the guy because he looked cool playing the sax on Arsenio Hall. It's happened.
Which leads to point #2: your notion of my "objective economic interests" might look nothing at all like my notion of them. Say I make $40,000 a year: is it in my interest to have a lot of government programs? Maybe; maybe not: maybe I figure that if I just got a big tax cut I could make a better go of it myself. Or maybe I decide a lot of government services is a good idea for everyone's sake. The decision can go either way, and the factors that shape it and the mode of thinking behind it are not purely, or even necessarily, economic.
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Oh yes, and speaking of John McCain, the same paper that endorsed McCain for the Republican nomination a month or so ago succinctly made the case against him on Sunday:
Senator McCain Digs In Published: April 20, 2008
Senator John McCain’s speech on taxes last week was widely seen as a stay-the-Bush-course pledge. Not true. Mr. McCain would dig a much deeper hole than even President Bush, exactly what the country does not need. Mr. Bush is already bequeathing his successor a government deep in debt, ill prepared to meet foreseeable challenges — health care, road and bridge repair, alternative energy — let alone emergencies.
Unfortunately, Mr. McCain has reversed his earlier passionate — and correct — opposition to the Bush tax cuts. He now calls for permanently extending them. He also proposes to repeal the alternative minimum tax. Those two proposals alone would reduce tax revenue by $1 trillion over four years.
His speech did not stop there. He proposed doubling the dependent exemption, to $7,000 per child, cutting revenue by $171 billion more over four years. He said the increase was needed to keep up with inflation, but the exemption has been adjusted for inflation every year since 1982. Then there’s his idea to suspend the 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day. That would cost the highway trust fund $10 billion.
Mr. McCain’s other big proposals — to cut the corporate tax and make the credit for research and development permanent — are fatally flawed by the fact that he offers no feasible way to pay for them. We do not doubt that Mr. McCain would try harder than Mr. Bush to cut spending. But his claim that he would offset hundreds of billions of dollars in new tax cuts by closing loopholes and cutting pork is just not credible. Pork spending, or earmarks, come to some $18 billion a year.
Mr. McCain has admitted that he does not know a lot about economics. But he should have no trouble recognizing political pandering, which is the only explanation for many of his proposals. To be taken seriously, he needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan that shows how he would govern without adding to the fiscal damage of the past eight years.
Emphasis mine. Is it sadder that a serious candidate would offer such nonsense or that it's possible he's right in assuming there are still people out there who will swallow it?
Well, thank goodness some people are starting to employ critical thought! I get so sick of soundbites and "image" projection I could just scream.
All you've got to do is choose love. That's how I live it now. I learned a long time ago, I can feed the birds in my garden. I can't feed them all. -- Ringo Starr, Rolling Stone magazine, May 2007
For all I know, Ringo might be a yogi disguised as a drummer! - George Harrison
they seem to consistently vote against their economic self interests
This is a crucially important issue for the Democrats going forward, and for the liberal/left generally. There are two points to make here, I think: 1) Economic interests by no means determine how people vote; and 2) People's own notions of their own particular economic interests are almost as varied as the ideologies they embrace, if any.
Let's go in order: the idea that economics determines the whole social order and people's perceptions of their own position within that order is a bad oversimplification of the actual state of things which goes back at least as far as Karl Marx: "all history is the history of class struggle," right? And what defines class? Your economic position. Far too simple a proposition, and it's extraordinary that people still, at whatever intellectual remove, buy it.
Lots of things determine how you think besides "your objective economic position," and you might act on any of them when you get into the voting booth. Anyway, economics might have nothing with to do with how you vote at all in any particular election. Maybe you just voted for the guy because he looked cool playing the sax on Arsenio Hall. It's happened.
Which leads to point #2: your notion of my "objective economic interests" might look nothing at all like my notion of them. Say I make $40,000 a year: is it in my interest to have a lot of government programs? Maybe; maybe not: maybe I figure that if I just got a big tax cut I could make a better go of it myself. Or maybe I decide a lot of government services is a good idea for everyone's sake. The decision can go either way, and the factors that shape it and the mode of thinking behind it are not purely, or even necessarily, economic.
The points made here are good, but I think they address subtleties that, even if they once were relevant, are no longer in play here. We're not talking about "Gee, I sure am glad I got that whopping $300 stimulus package from Uncle Sam, now I wonder if I should put it in the Roth IRA or just buy a few kegs and have a big party...". Good old George, Dick, and Co. have gotten us to the point where it's becoming frighteningly more usual for someone in the middle class to be saying "OK, now I'm losing my house, I can't afford to fill up the truck with gas, and I can't get a loan for my kid's community college tuition". And yet, if things go true to form, a lot of those same people will wind up voting for a Republican because they buy into the "I'm more like you than that egg-headed lily-livered quiche-eating liberal" branding that the Republicans are so good at (or is it that their "marks" are so easy?). That's what I mean about voting against one's economic self interest.
I love John, I love Paul, And George and Ringo, I love them all!
And yet, if things go true to form, a lot of those same people will wind up voting for a Republican because they buy into the "I'm more like you than that egg-headed lily-livered quiche-eating liberal" branding that the Republicans are so good at (or is it that their "marks" are so easy?). That's what I mean about voting against one's economic self interest.
That's what journalists mean by "culture wars" and why the Republicans are seven for ten in presidential elections since 1968. Nixon got the idea first; he opposed "normal values" to sixties radicalism and knocked a chunk off the Democratic Party's working class base in industrial states like Ohio and Michigan. It's been in play ever since. In a less savory way, it more consistently delivered a large piece of the southern white vote (until then a Democratic preserve since the civil war) to the Republicans as well. George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry were all done in by variants of the same approach: we're the party of "regular Americans," and the Democrats are the party of radicals or are just plain yucky and can't even bowl worth a damn. Never mind who ended up cashing in at budget time.
I personally would never vote for a president who couldn't bowl. After all, it's such a big part of his duties once he assumes office.
My all-time favorite inane remark came from one of our most prestigious columnists here in Denver (local guy) who said, deliberating between Bush and Gore, he decided to go for Bush because he would feel more comfortable "shaking his hand alone in the middle of a big field." Now, we all know how standing around in empty fields consumes acres of a president's time, so this is a very logical decision. (I hope my sarcasm is coming through here.) It made me want to scream, THAT IS THE BASIS FOR YOUR DECISION!?!? YOU MORON!!!
It's what Alexis was talking about re: "factual-based reasoning" or the absence thereof. Successful manipulators know that you make an appeal to the emotions; that's how you get the numbers. I believe their research (can't be refuted), but I'm still irritated. What is it, are facts too hard? Is it too much work to look up whether the person you are voting for is even remotely qualified, or do you just swallow the sound bite and go waddling off to your next reality TV show?
America really is getting the government it deserves. It's just frustrating to me that so much that was really excellent is going down the drain, and taking a lot of good people with it. But we "egg-headed lily-livered quiche-eating liberals" have always been in the minority anyway...
All you've got to do is choose love. That's how I live it now. I learned a long time ago, I can feed the birds in my garden. I can't feed them all. -- Ringo Starr, Rolling Stone magazine, May 2007
For all I know, Ringo might be a yogi disguised as a drummer! - George Harrison
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It made me want to scream, THAT IS THE BASIS FOR YOUR DECISION!?!? YOU MORON!!!
I know; I've launched more than one spleen doing the same thing myself. Just last week I had an argument with a guy who insisted, in all seriousness, that we should replace the income tax system with a single ten percent VAT tax. He wasn't a Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee guy, either. Ten percent, eh?
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