Too bad, Karl! You and your fellow Southern Strategists have raised and fed this monster all your life. It's yours!
Meanwhile, alleged Democratic President Obama is worried about appearing to care about his constituents.
Memo to Jay Carney: putting forth half-assed, small beer proposals that you know will accomplish little because you think, cynically, that’s what “independents” want is a stunt. It’s the definition of a stunt. It’s also craven and cowardly when we’ve still got over 9% of the country unemployed.
And Obama is even going on a bus tour!
Finally, from the Bush's 3rd Term file, today's feature is the Obama DOJ (courtesy of Scott Horton):
The prosecution showed Justice to be firmly aligned with Alabama’s then-governor, Republican Bob Riley, who had leveled the initial vote-buying accusations during a heated election-time political debate over gambling issues.
…
Riley initially launched the politically charged bingo investigation; it was then picked up by a U.S. Attorney’s office headed by Leura Canary, the wife of Riley’s campaign adviser. Local political figures cried foul, but Breuer insisted that the matter was being handled entirely by the main branch of the Justice Department.
...
The suppression of the Alabama bingo gambling industry, and the Justice Department’s prosecution of those associated with it, greatly benefited Mississippi’s Indian casino gambling operations by putting their principal competition out of business. In a sense, therefore, the bingo prosecution forms a coda to the tale of “Casino Jack” Abramoff, with the Justice Department playing a murky and controversial ongoing role.
Yes, this is the same Leura Canary who was appointed by G.W. Bush and went after Don Siegelman. And this is Lanny A. Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
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15 comments:
'Reagan's 8th term' would be a bit more accurate, though if we're to be technically correct, the best kind of correct, it's really Washington's 56th.
Too bad, Karl! You and your fellow Southern Strategists have raised and fed this monster all your life. It's yours!
Couldn't happen to a nicer mad scientist.
If the democrats have a lick of sense, they will actively recruit recent college grads for paid campaign positions (canvassing, phone banking) to reduce the unemployment rate and foster identification with the party. I don't think that will happen, though.
Randal, you are correct, politically, but we don't require that here.
B^4, I'm fairly certain the Administration's "strategy" at this point is to specifically exclude doing anything we think is sensible.
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It's especially infuriating to see the White House and the Democratic be so afraid to be seen as liberal when one of the GOP frontrunners goes out of her way to be as conservative as she can. Her economic policy is to cut corporate tax rates and deny extending unemployment benefits during a time when corporations are hoarding cash and unemployment is 9%. How can you not use that to rile up the electorate?
It's kind of funny. In a 'gonna vomit' kind of way.
You guys keep talking about some kind of American Liberal Political Ideology like it's popular or even as if there's some significant constituency clamoring for it.
Thing is, though, I just don't see it. Do you? Where (outside of Blogger and your occasional more ambitious Wordpress undertaking) is the demand for these policies we keep being so outraged that Obama won't pursue?
I suspect if there was some real demand for policies in support of the liberal worldview, especially considering they are the often the only positions you don't have to LIE to support (see expansionary fiscal policy, carbon pricing, automatic stabilizers, rational defense spending, health care cost controls etc.) then we would begin to see more political support for moving that pesky window back to the left.
Except we don't. Nobody has ANY sense whatsoever that you can actually WIN a national election while supporting these positions. The various 2012 candidates are feeling around, but it's pretty clear that the sweet spot in a Presidential General Election is somewhere between rightwing and EXTREME rightwing. And even Democratic candidates feel they need to support these right wing positions in order to get more than 'fringe' votes.
Now you can tell me there's plenty of support for liberal public policy and the media is the problem and it just takes political courage to speak to the American people in the explaining voice and tell them why all these things they are being told are wrong, why we actually shouldn't tighten money and reduce entitlement and transfer payments and lower corporate taxes and regulations and attack Iran, but everything I've seen tells me you're gonna lose that argument.
Again....
"Memo to Jay Carney: putting forth half-assed, small beer proposals"
When I first read this, I thought it said, Jim Carrey. I was going to say "duh! He's Canadian eh. Of course he's putting forth half-assed, beer proposals!"
Then I saw that I was wrong and ummm.... I had nothing else to really say. :)
Oh and our auto insurance went from $800 a year to just a smidge under $2000 with two teens driving. There goes my boob job! :(
((Hugs))
Laura
Thing is, though, I just don't see it. Do you? Where (outside of Blogger and your occasional more ambitious Wordpress undertaking) is the demand for these policies we keep being so outraged that Obama won't pursue?
Public support for getting out of our wars has been and remains high.
Support for ending the Bush-Cheney tax cuts for the rich has been and remains high.
Support for a public health insurance option has been and remains high.
The reason we can't have any of those things is the people who run our country (and the chattering class they pay to push their opinions) don't want us to have them. Instead they want to pay for wars, tax cuts, and bailouts with Medicare and Social Security cuts.
And Obama is part of the problem, not the solution. Simpson-Bowles led to the Gang of Six which led to "Super Congress"...all to accomplish that goal.
More Reaganism is the problem, not the solution.
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Mikey is right and he is wrong. Polling generally shows there is strong theoretical support for most liberal positions. People are generally anti-war, pro-choice, pro-social security, medicaid, etc. Usually by significant margins. But once the monied propaganda machine roars into action in support of corporate interests, those naturally humane tendencies get drowned out in the roar for "security" or "justice" or the outrage du jour. We are the marks in this grift operation.
Oh whoops. What thunder said.
You are right, of course.
I was not including 'popular support' in the concept of a political constituency for an American Liberal Ideology.
Why not? Well, simply because since McGovern was laughed out of town, popular support for a (more) Liberal political and economic agenda has utterly failed to translate into any kind of POLITICAL power base.
Now we all have our theories about why that might be, from the polysci versions of a "fragmented liberal electorate" to the widespread support for social conservatism offsetting the widespread support for poltical liberalism to outright malfeasance.
But what it means, at net, is that the American Political System is broken. It has been manipulated, co-opted and monetized to the point where it genuinely doesn't matter what "the majority of the people" want. Once they succeeded in capturing the system, they immediately set about hardening it to protect it from political re-capture. Now they are squeezing every drop out of it, to the point where they will not invest in infrastructure maintenance, Basic Research or Education.
Nobody expects this radically unsustainable system to go on for long - it's just a smash and grab now, to be followed by the inevitable massive bloodletting.
Houseman (in a slightly different context):
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.
Too bad, Karl! You and your fellow Southern Strategists have raised and fed this monster all your life. It's yours!
AYUP.
Except we don't. Nobody has ANY sense whatsoever that you can actually WIN a national election while supporting these positions.
It's not that you can't win, but that the process doesn't produce many of those folks to vote for.
Reply before thread finish fail.
That's okay, Mr. McGravitas. You still get a prize for participating.
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I think the country turned into a monarchy with interchangeable characters who get to warm the throne every so often.
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