Tag Archives: Obama

Who sent the bombs to Obama officials?

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I am very curious to know who mailed the homemade-looking manila-envelope bombs to President Obama and the others. It is too soon for an affirmative theory. CNN and MSNBC instantaneously call President Trump the common denominator, also emphasize that the bomb addressed to Brennan was sent to CNN.

I hope all the bombs have been recovered. So far, there are two (actual) common denominators, besides the person who sent the bombs.

Bombs found so far were addressed to former President Barack Obama; his Attorney General, Eric Holder; his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton; and his CIA head, John Brennan. The others were addressed to California Democratic congress member Maxine Waters, an Obama supporter; and major Democratic donor George Soros, an Obama supporter.

[UPDATE Thursday: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/robert-de-niros-nyc-restaurant-reportedly-receives-suspected-mail-bomb-similar-to-those-sent-to-top-democrats-and-cnn.html 

  • Explosive devices similar to ones sent to prominent Democrats earlier this week was sent to actor Robert De Niro and former vice president Joe Biden, according to media reports.

So the list of Obama officials is now further filled in with President Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden. De Niro famously stumped for Obama.]

Image result for De Niro mail

The other common denominator is Florida congress member Debbie Wasserman Schultz. All the packages have her as their bogus return address.

WaPo report: razor-thin Clinton “edge” even in 50-state hand-picked poll

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WaPo headline reverses the story

My morning paper on September 7 had an unusual feature. The 9-16ths-inch headline on The Washington Post’s front page trumpeted, “Clinton has edge in 50-state poll.” Inside, a special pull-out section on “CAMPAIGN 2016” seemed to expand the story.

Actually, it contradicted the headline.

Let’s start with the easy part–pictures.

WaPo front page September 7, 2016

WaPo front page September 7, 2016

This parti-colored map ran above the fold, spanning eight inches. Take a look at the colors. As shown, the paper designated ten states as “tossups,” purple on the map–Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin. —Georgia? Mississippi? Texas? “Tossups”?

WaPo also designated Alaska and South Carolina reddishly as “Leans GOP.”

The special pull-out had another graphic divided by colors–blue and blueish, red and reddish, purple–with poll numbers. (Page 21) Blue/-ish states totaled 244 electoral votes, red/-ish states totaled 126 electoral votes, of 270 needed to win.

Setting blue and red aside for the moment, that leaves 168 electoral votes in the purple ‘tossup’ column. Here’s where arithmetic, a closer look, and some effort at exactitude might come in handy.

Accuracy, accuracy, and accuracy

According to the Post’s own poll, among the ‘tossup’ states, Trump led in Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Ohio–a total 55 electoral votes. Clinton led in the other six. (Those perennial tossups Arizona and Texas add up to another 49 electoral votes, yielding a total 230 for Trump without going into battleground states, but let’s not get ahead of the story.)

If something about this seems off-kilter, turn to page 24. That’s where readers finally get the breakdown on WaPo’s Survey Monkey numbers. (Yes, they used Survey Monkey–polling only people they had selected. See page 22.)

These were the stats for (selected) “four-way races,” i.e. twelve states with Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Jill Stein included in the poll. In Ohio, rated a ‘tossup’ on WaPo’s front page, Clinton polled at 37 percent to Trump’s 40 percent. In North Carolina, also rated ‘tossup’ as mentioned, Clinton polled 40 percent to Trump’s 41 percent. In Texas, both candidates polled at 40 percent; in Colorado, both candidates polled at 37 percent (unlike Clinton’s ‘narrow leads’ viz the front pager). In tossup Arizona, Clinton polled at 37 percent, Trump at 39 percent. In Georgia, Clinton 39 percent, Trump 40 percent.

These numbers did not appear on the front page of the paper or the front page of the Campaign 2016 pull-out.

Further, Secretary Clinton polled at 40 percent or less not only in states where that might be expected–Texas, Georgia–but in states touted as winnable for her–Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin. She ran barely better than 40 percent in Florida and Pennsylvania. She polled barely at 50 percent, if that, in Rhode Island. She polled at under 50 percent in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Maine. In fact, about the only place in the union seemingly favorable for Clinton, outside of bedrock-blue states like Hawaii and Maryland, is Virginia.

This falls short of an Electoral College landslide. It must have been a crushing disappointment to the WaPo personnel who created that hand-picked sample. The entire thrust of the story is how narrow a needle Mr. Trump has to thread, to get to 270. But by the same token–i.e. WaPo numbers–Clinton’s reported “edge” teeters on the brink–a loss of two or three states.

There are other problems with this kind of reporting. Under the sub-heading “Utah is most uncertain state,” the reader finds–that Utah is still solidly GOP, even with a locally popular Libertarian on the ballot siphoning away red votes. Maybe the problem is with the headings.

But the bigger problem is with the nominee. The short story is that Democratic Party insiders and their GOP/Wall Street/insider-media allies selected the worst possible candidate for Democrats, in an anti-democratic process that was worse yet. She’s not a nominee in the sense of having been elected as such by voters. She is a pre-selected candidate who succeeded in being designated as official nominee.

The whole thing was a betrayal. In Barack Obama, the Democrats selected a president who was elected by both the popular and the electoral vote, in the most genuine election in years, probably the first relatively open election since Jimmy Carter won in 1976. Eight years later, the party and the nation should be moving forward, to build on the foundation created by President Obama. Instead, it took a giant slide backward–about 90 percent from jealous/envious passive-aggressive inertia, so far as I can tell.

In a bleak prospect, Clinton might be elected to the White House, with a GOP Congress elected to rein her in–thus giving us a lousy president and a lousy congress. If past patterns hold, that would pave the way for Clinton to make deals–benefiting the GOP, undercutting Dems and the public, with a big cut off the top for herself. And that in turn would set up a worse, and winning, GOP nominee next time.

By the way, remember Senator Mitch McConnell’s open vow, at the beginning of the Obama administration, to oppose President Obama at every opportunity? It will be interesting to find out whether the Clinton team green-lighted McConnell, and who else did.

Update 9/29/16

As of today, Real Clear Politics has Trump up nationally by 4 points in one poll, Clinton up by 1 point in another. A miserable showing for Democrats.

*Full disclosure–as Maryland public records would show, I am a registered Democrat.

 

Hillary Clinton about 2008: “Eventually I just decided I had to withdraw”

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Sunday, May 1 (May Day):

CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, Tapper interviewing Secretary Clinton, established two points. First, in spite of polls showing widespread doubt about Clinton’s honesty, Clinton still tends to make recklessly inaccurate statements in public venues. Second, Clinton and strategist Karen Finney suggested no particular place for Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic national convention. They offered no specific suggestions as to how Sanders delegates might contribute.

To the first point, this pick-up line from Clinton:

“There comes a time when you have to look at the [realities],” Clinton said. “In fact, in ’08 I was much closer in both popular vote and pledged delegates to Sen. Obama than is the case right now, but eventually I just decided that I had to withdraw and support Sen. Obama because the goal was to make sure we had a Democrat in the White House.”

The statement is posted at CNN.com. Clinton actually said that in 2008, she “eventually just decided I had to withdraw.” Link here. The interview was taped Friday (April 29).

Tapper had asked Clinton whether she was the presumptive nominee, as Trump styles himself. She demurred but said appropriately that she is on the path to the nomination.

But leaving behind the appropriate and dignified, again to the fore comes Clinton’s compulsion to overreach. It wasn’t enough for her just to tell Tapper that she was ahead, and that she hoped for party unity. Asked about the 2008 campaign, she had to rewrite history. In actual fact, Clinton did not ‘withdraw’ from the 2008 Democratic primary until June. In fact, she did not withdraw; she lost. The comments below from National Public Radio on June 5, 2008, are representative:

“From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I’m Robert Siegel.

This Saturday, Hillary Clinton will concede – maybe. She’s expected to congratulate Barack Obama on winning the Democratic nomination. But there have been mixed messages from Clinton’s campaign and she is not planning to release her delegates.

NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson reports.

MARA LIASSON: Senator Clinton’s behavior since Obama clinched the nomination has some of her strongest supporters worried that she is undermining Obama at a historic moment that should be his to savor. Congressman Charlie Rangel is the dean of Clinton’s own state delegation in the House.

Representative CHARLES RANGEL (Democrat, New York): The New York congressional delegation are with her to the end, but we thought the end was the end.

LIASSON: The end Rangel meant was Tuesday night [June 3, 2008], when Clinton delivered what many Democrats are calling her less-than-gracious non-concession speech. To give you an idea how much anguish this has caused even her most loyal supporters, listen to Bill Galston, a former top aide in Bill Clinton’s White House.

Mr. BILL GALSTON: I was an early supporter and remain supportive of her candidacy as long – as long as there – the candidacy was at stake. Having said that – how to put this? This is really hard for me. She’s not doing either herself or Senator Obama any favors.”

The issue in 2008 went beyond a less-than-gracious concession speech. As previously written, one Clinton campaign tactics in 2008 was to keep referencing the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as proof that anything can happen in an election.

It can hardly be expected that Clinton would bring up that issue in a Sunday morning interview. Still, she could have refrained from egregious distortion.

Other parts of Clinton’s statement above may be more colorable but also are problematic. The timeline of the 2008 election shows that on May 1, 2008, Sen. Clinton did indeed have more delegates than Bernie Sanders has now. However, she also had to lend her campaign $1 million of her own money. (On April 29, she had come on ABC saber-rattling against Iran.) A few days later (May 5) she lent her campaign another $425K.

The first week of May was big in 2008. On May 5, Clinton’s campaign argued that the total needed to win nomination should be 200 additional delegates, an attempt to move the goalposts. On May 7, Clinton reminded audiences about the killing of RFK in 1968 once in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and once in Washington, D.C. (There is no evidence that the times recorded are the only occasions Clinton used this talking point. It was and is a delicate item for reporters.) On May 8, she told USA Today that “Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening.” She later walked back the comment. She is now walking back her “off the reservation” comment about Trump or others, used as the tease by CNN this morning.

Less colorful but also problematic

Other statements Clinton and her strategist Karen Finney, in today’s CNN round table, could raise concern. Clinton said early, in response to questions about working with Sanders, that she looks forward to working with Sanders “in the lead-up to the convention” and “in the lead-up to the platform.” If this phrasing was more carefully chosen than some of her other comments, it does not suggest much place for Senator Sanders and his delegates in Philadelphia.

In the CNN round table, Sanders strategist Jeff Weaver reiterated that Sanders will stay in the race until the Democratic convention. Finney’s comments paralleled Clinton’s. While making nice to Sanders in general terms, Finney refrained from specifics. She referred to “conversations” with Sanders about “what he thinks is important for the platform.” Finney suggested that Clinton agrees with Sanders broadly on his positions, or some positions, but has different approaches as to “how we get there.”

None of this raises hope that Sanders supporters will be part of the national conversation, from the perspective of the Clinton campaign in 2016.

Clinton on convention platform

Back to the “I just decided I had to withdraw” line —

Clinton’s insistence on rewriting history is the more baffling for being so unnecessary. Virtually any candidate could have put the same thing better. A witty, self-deprecating Barack Obama or Jack Kennedy might have made a joke out of it. “Eventually, after going down [xxx] delegates after that last primary, I just decided to withdraw. Primaries aren’t everything.”

Something along those lines. But for Hillary Clinton, the way to sum up the 2008 primary–which she lost decisively–is with an insinuation that she withdrew voluntarily. There was no follow-up question about ’08.

Yet the Clinton allies fret about media coverage, and about that persistent perception of untruthfulness.

[Edited slightly from morning post]

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton on using other people’s words (2008)

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There is a great Saturday Night Live parody of Hillary Clinton literally turning into Bernie Sanders:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs47ce4QRBY

(Video clips of the hilarious skit are widely available on the Internet, here and here among other places.)

Now let’s get back to that topic of amnesia about 2008.

On Thursday, February 21, in the 2008 campaign, Senator Hillary Clinton leveled a singular accusation against Senator Barack Obama.

From transcripts:

“SEN. CLINTON: Well, I think that if your candidacy is going to be about words, then they should be your own words. That’s, I think, a very simple proposition. (Applause.) And you know — you know, lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in; it’s change you can Xerox. And I just don’t think —

SEN. OBAMA: Oh, but that — that’s not what happened there —

SEN. CLINTON: No, but — you know, but Barack, it is, because if — you know, if you look — (jeers from the audience) — if you look — if you look — if you look at the YouTube of these videos, it does raise questions.”

The exchange attracted some attention on the campaign trail, although with less than success than the Clinton campaign presumably hoped. As discussed by anchor Lloyd Robertson on CTV Television the same night,

LLOYD ROBERTSON: And the two Democratic contenders for the U.S. Presidential nomination struck a few sparks tonight during a debate in the crucial state of Texas. At one point the moderator asked Senator Barack Obama how he responded to charges from Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign that he was guilty of plagiarizing a speech by the Governor of Massachusetts. Obama pointed out that the governor, Demal Patrick, was a co chair of his campaign.

BARACK OBAMA  (Democratic Presidential Candidate): The notion that I had plagiarized from somebody who was one of my national co chairs, who gave me the line and suggested that I use it I think is silly.

Less pointed than the criticism itself is the remarkable fact that it came from Hillary Clinton, who is now going around trying to sound like Elizabeth Warren.

As I wrote in 2008, as a feminist I would like to vote for a woman for president. But the fundamental problems with Mrs. Clinton remain exactly the same now, as then, including her ability to say nice-sounding things, good things, and then to turn around and either do the opposite or use her language as a smokescreen for economic rapacity.

Quite simply, this is a candidate who has never marched in the vanguard for economic justice. She is still GOP Lite, the Republicans’ stop-loss candidate, as Mr. Koch’s recent comments confirm.

As fallible human beings, we all fall short of perfect truth. But Mrs. Clinton carries a pleasant, complacent deceitfulness into pathology territory, like a spouse in denial. She can sound so nice that, at least when she feels relatively comfortable, she resembles some of the moms you remember from the PTA, down to earth, reasonably sensible–and then she trots out a line about the other candidate that turns out to be either exactly the reverse of true, or far more applicable to herself.

Take for example her habit, or pattern, of accusing others of exactly her own problems, like the accusation that Obama was using someone else’s words, or the (dog-whistle) harping on Obama’s alleged inexperience. There was also her other jaw-dropping line on Barack Obama in 2008:

“Well, you know, Senator Obama, it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern.”

As I wrote back then, I never did think this was a particularly good read on Obama, whose positions generally come across as measured and rational–well thought out, in other words.

The criticism applies better to the Clintons. Clinton’s vote for George Bush’s war is the perfect example. The public overwhelmingly recognizes that the Iraq resolution gave Bush the cover he needed to invade Iraq. But did Mrs. Clinton acknowledge that? No, her version of the story was that she voted for the war in order to rein in Bush.

As for Bill Clinton, he is rapidly becoming the epicenter of defensiveness. In this election cycle, he has spoken to audiences as though he thinks the Iraq War should not even be brought up. As I wrote in the 2008 election, Bill Clinton is now (again) lumbering around testy and blustering, bullying reporters and blaming the media for his wife’s problematic candidacy. The main difference is that President Clinton was red-faced in 2008 and is pale and thin now.

This is not a matter of appearances. It’s the conduct that is unbecoming. And yet the Clintons themselves seem to feel little doubt that Bill Clinton is adored wherever he goes. (The grain of truth in this representation is that, as in 2008, the Clintons fare better with audiences and voters in communities with less access to the Internet. In 2008, Hillary Clinton did better with seniors, as she does to some extent now, in some regions. In 2016, she often does better with African-Americans–especially in the Deep South states with the widest racial disparity in Internet access.)

Back to Mrs. Clinton’s own career. To recap: she was a good student in college and at Yale Law; flunked the bar exam; moved to Arkansas and re-took the bar exam there; passed. Married Bill Clinton, who became Arkansas’ attorney general and then governor for several terms, after an early loss.

Her law career in Arkansas? Her law career was as the governor’s wife. Look where she worked. For all Mrs. Clinton’s high-sounding rhetoric about ‘fighting for us’, ‘standing up to the NRA’, etc., did she take a low-paying public-service job in the Public Defender’s office? No. Did she go to work as an Assistant District Attorney, fighting crime? No. Welfare or Child Services? No. Did she work as a labor lawyer, helping organizers in Arkansas? Pursue corporate malefactors for workplace abuses or environmental abuses? Sexual harassment? Get real. This is no Norma Rae. Mrs. Clinton went for a ‘good’ job, a job she got as a pol’s wife,  in the most established law firm in Arkansas. (For perspective, check out statistics on the employment situation for most young adults with first-professional degrees in the late 1970s.)

Back to February, 2008 —

By the way, what Obama had said was,

“We are going to rid the tax code of these loopholes and giveaways. We’re going to stop giving a penny of your money to anybody who ships a job out of Texas, Ohio or anywhere else to another country. We’re certainly going to begin to get the tax code to reflect what the needs of middle class families are, so we can rebuild a strong and prosperous middle class.”

Surely every Obama voter, including this one, believes that we would be better off if these goals had been achieved. But they have been obstructed, to the last syllable, by Republicans in Congress and out. And they were never boosted successfully, or effectively, by the Clintons or by Hillary Clinton’s top allies. The globe-trotting Clintons have been considerably more engaged in reaping big bucks abroad than in keeping American jobs at home.

In hindsight, it looks as though Clinton’s accusation of plagiarizing was basically an indirect attack on Obama’s statement itself. She couldn’t outright come out and oppose keeping jobs at home or getting rid of corporate giveaways in the tax code. But she could signal indirectly, to interested donors, that she had her mind on other things.

Defeat amnesia: More on Hillary Clinton comments in 2008

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More on Hillary Clinton in 2008–

The previous blog (Friday, April 15) was a reminder of Senator Hillary Clinton’s 2008 comments on assassination. Specifically, she instanced as the reason for her staying in the 2008 race the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968. As a parallel to the effect of that tragic event on the 1968 race, she said that her husband had won his race in 1992 in June.

Below is some of the discussion–just some of it–stemming from Clinton’s repeated remark. The commentary quoted below, while trenchant,  is only the tip of the iceberg. Moreover, as I wrote previously, Clinton had actually made the same reference several times before on the campaign trail. It was her using the explicit word “assassination” in a conversation with a newspaper’s editorial board that had such impact in May, 2008.

There are a few concerns here. One is the series of shifting and implausible explanations Clinton gave for her remarks; see below. Another is her not apologizing to the other candidates–Senators Barack Obama and John McCain–who had a vested interest in the remarks. (She rushed to apologize to the Kennedys.) There is a strong concern about a presidential candidate’s referring to assassination in a heated race; see below. And last, there is the strong possibility that many newer voters this year have never been informed about the character Clinton displayed as candidate in 2008.

From transcripts

May 23, 2008: Fox News Network: FOX SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRIT HUME 6:00 p.m. EST:

“(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, (D) NEW YORK: My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Clinton then apologized–to the Kennedy family–for her remarks:

“I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nominations, primary contests that go into June. That’s historic fact, and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family, was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

“BAIER: The first video there was Hillary Clinton talking to a South Dakota newspaper editorial board, where, as you heard, she mentioned the assassination in 1968.

The second video, an apology late this afternoon, scrambling before cameras, after the Barack Obama campaign put out this quote:

“Senator Clinton’s statement before the editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign,” Bill Burton, campaign spokesman.”

I am not always a fan of the political coverage on Fox. But this was one occasion when Fox News commentators got it right:

“KRAUTHAMMER: It was an amazing gaffe. She has spoken in the past about how about in ’68 and ’92 the campaigns have gone on long into June, but she had never uttered the word “assassination.” And the reason is that you don’t in presidential campaigns.

We all worry about it, and we worry about it in particular when you have the first African-American candidate who can be the president.

And that’s not a paranoid fascinating. You remember that Colin Powell was on a wave of support in 1996, and thinking of running. According to Bob Woodward, his wife Alma had said that he could not run, and, in fact, Woodward writes that she had said she would leave him if he ran for one reason–she thought he would be assassinated.

We have a history of that in our country. It was obviously on the Powells’ mind, and it is in the back of people’s minds today. And you worry about it. Whenever you see a presidential candidate wade into a crowd, everybody worries about it.

But for her to say the word is astonishing. I have to attribute it to fatigue, exhaustion, because raising it in this context is really toxic. She had to come out and apologize immediately. But I think it resonates.

BAIER: There are people out there, obviously, Nina, who will say she has said this line a million times. Today she used the assassination. Why?”

Note the point made by Bret Baier in passing–that Clinton had made the same reference often before. (This time, she made it unavoidably explicit.) The suggestion is borne out in further commentary:

“NINA EASTON, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, “FORTUNE MAGAZINE”: There are some people who are speculating that she did this purposely, which is, I think, insane, because it was so politically stupid, why would she do that?

I think probably what it was was a bit of a curtain raiser for us on her private conversations, as in things could happen. This is why she’ll stay in this race and why her husband Bill is encouraging her to stay in the race, because things could happen.

But I agree with Charles, the idea of mentioning the word “assassination.” We know that Barack Obama has been subject to threats. He has been under secret service protection for more than a year now because of that.

It’s a troubling kind of link to make, and it probably doesn’t help her standing with the Obama campaign.”

On May 23, 2008, from a different place on the political spectrum, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann hosted similar perspectives:

“KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST (voice over): Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow?

At Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for the first time, Senator Hillary Clinton actually invokes the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 as a reason for her not to drop out of the race with Senator Obama.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON,  (D-NY) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?

We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Why in the name of all that all of us hold dear, would anybody ever say anything like this? Can she in good conscious continue in the race for president after having said anything like this? Is her political career at an end?

An official statement from Senator Clinton`s campaign: “She was simply referencing her husband in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 as historic examples of the nominating contest going well into the summer. Any, any reading into it beyond that is inaccurate.”

Howard Fineman on the extraordinary statement and its ramifications for Senator Clinton and her presidential bid. Jonathan Alter on why — even if it were appropriate – she would say it, since it`s not like the sudden retirement or incapacity of a candidate, would mean the Democrats would simply not run anybody.

And a Special Comment: This time Senator Clinton, you have gone too far.”

Olbermann makes a good point on the lack of internal logic in Clinton’s comment: hypothetically anything could happen, but the hypothetical event would not necessarily change everything. The historical event in 2008 was that no presidential candidate before had done what Clinton did.

“OLBERMANN: Obviously, the operative word here is assassination. She used it at least once before, as a historical marker to time two months ago, but all the references since to, even timing — to even Robert Kennedy`s death had avoided that word. That word is a third rail word in American politics, is it not?

FINEMAN: It sure is. And it shocked her today and shocked the world of the campaign. I`ve been on the phone and blackberrying (ph) with leaders on both camps and elsewhere. And you saw Hillary Clinton in that supermarket there looking kind of dazed herself. I think she realized that she had done something here that`s going to be very hard to repair.

Even though David Axelrod, the leader of the Obama campaign told me in similar words, he said, “Look, I assume she didn`t mean anything here. You know, it`s too dark a thought to think otherwise.”

As pointed out in Friday’s post, Clinton’s examples (1968 and 1992) were not good examples in the first place. If Hillary Clinton was going to defend long primary seasons, she had better examples:

“She could have cited 1984 or 1988, Mike Dukakis, she could have even talk about Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford battling it out to the floor of the convention in Kansas City in 1976. And she`s got something on her mind there that, I think, has troubled a lot of people somehow.”

Olbermann was among commentators (and others) who noticed that Clinton addressed her apology of sorts to the Kennedys, not to Obama or to the public:

“OLBERMANN: She also apologized for it when she did, an apology might be too strong a term. She expressed her regrets, specifically to the Kennedy family, but not to Senator Obama,  not to Senator McCain, who was another candidate in this race while this term is out there. Does that not seem to have left even the regret`s part of the job sort of half done?

FINEMAN: Well, it was a double pass there, Keith. She not only didn`t actually apologize to the Kennedy family, she said, “If somebody is upset about it, then I`m sorry.” And, of course, she completely avoided the main subject here, which is the notion that she somehow even inadvertently or somehow subconsciously in some weird way, was bringing up the possibility that there might be some cataclysmic change – you know, event in the campaign here like that.

So, she didn`t – she seems constitutionally incapable of just saying — I screwed up. And her sort of lead footedness about this here is being observed by all the people who are still undecided about whom to back.”

Clinton in 2008

Again, aside from the graver issues, there is that off-the-mark choice of 1968 and 1992 in the first place. The horse race was different then:

“OLBERMANN: Yes. Howard made a great point. The other practical political issue in this, the invoking of the assassination of RFK in June as a landmark, as a fixed time in the process, or even her husband clinching in June of 1992 — it`s apples and oranges historically, isn`t it? Because in `92, the Iowa caucuses were on the 10th of February; in 1968, New Hampshire was March 12th. June then is not June now.

ALTER: Right. The other thing that`s really important to understand is the first part of her answer where she referred to her husband, that somehow, like he didn`t clinch the nomination until June of 1992 is preposterous. He had had the nomination wrapped up for weeks by that point. Now, because California didn`t vote until June, as a technical matter, he wasn`t over the top, but the race was long since over.”

RFK in 1968

Olbermann’s special comment was forceful. Here, in part:

“She actually said those words.

Those words, Senator?

You actually invoked the nightmare of political assassination?

You actually invoked the specter of an inspirational leader, at the seeming moment of triumph for himself and a battered nation yearning to breathe free, silenced forever?

You actually used the word “assassination” in the middle of a campaign with a loud undertone of racial hatred — and gender hatred — and political hatred?

You actually used the word “assassination” in a time when there is a fear, unspoken but vivid and terrible, that our again-troubled land and fractured political landscape might target a black man running for president?

Or a white man.

Or a white woman!

You actually used those words, in this America, Senator, while running against an African-American man against whom the death threats started the moment he declared his campaign?

You actually used those words, in this America, Senator, while running to break your “greatest glass ceiling” and claiming there are people who would do anything to stop you?”

Moving back rightward on the spectrum, on May 25, 2008, Fox News’ Chris Wallace addressed Clinton’s comments. Wallace interviewed Terry McAuliffe, chair of the Clinton campaign, who of course denied that there was anything dark in Clinton’s line of thought. Here in part:

“MR. WALLACE: I want to ask you a couple of questions, then I’m going to get off this.

When Governor Huckabee made a bad joke at the NRA about someone pointing a gun at Obama, he immediately apologized and he personally called Obama to say he was sorry. Has Senator Clinton personally called Obama?

MCAULIFFE: No, and nor should she. Let’s be very clear. I will say this again.

This has nothing to do with Senator Obama. This was all about Hillary Clinton, her campaign, Chris, and her timeline.

WALLACE: But given the fact that people have been so offended, wouldn’t it make sense for her simply to call and say, hey, listen, if this caused you any heartburn, I’m sorry?

MCAULIFFE: Chris, I don’t why you’re saying everyone’s offended. The press corps, it’s a quiet weekend, everybody got overhyped, they had a big weekend talking about it.

But you know what I’ve got to tell you? Chris, out in Puerto Rico and South Dakota where I just was last week, and Montana, this is not what they’re talking about. They’re talking about $4-a-gallon gas. They’re not going away for Memorial Day weekend. They’re talking about having —

WALLACE: I’ll tell you somebody who was offended. Charlie Rangel — one of your big supporters, one of the people who helped get Hillary Clinton into politics running for the Senate from New York — said it was one of the dumbest remarks he’d ever heard. So there are a lot of people who were offended.”

Wallace, often well prepared for interviews, can actually produce follow-up questions. In this case, he pointed to an obvious inconsistency in Clinton’s saying that she mentioned Robert Kennedy because she was thinking of Ted Kennedy (whose brain cancer had just been announced). Chronology is key:

“MR. WALLACE: Last question. Senator Clinton explained her reference to the Kennedy assassination by saying that the family is on her mind because of Ted Kennedy’s recent illness.

But as you point out, more than two months ago, here’s what she told Time Magazine: Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A.

So it’s not true that she started thinking about this and it was on her mind because of Ted Kennedy’s illness.”

McAuliffe gamely, if less than coherently, did his best to shore up Clinton’s explanation:

“MCAULIFFE: Maybe, obviously, in this context. She has had thousands of interviews since she talked in March to Time Magazine. Thousands and thousands. Maybe on this one editorial board she was [back ?] because she was thinking about Senator Kennedy and the brain cancer and all of that issue.”

On May 27, 2008, MSNBC’s Hardball, addressed the topic.

“Let`s take a look right now at what Senator Clinton said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just — I don`t understand it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: You know, Senator Clinton has said in her defense, which is quite right, to make a defense in this case, she said that her comments were taken out of context. I would suggest that she didn`t say them in context. They came out to the public in the context of the following, unintended or not — the Ted Kennedy health problem right now, which everybody cares about, the fact that everyone cares about the safety of Barack Obama and worries about it, the fact that some of us fell a sort of deja vu about 1968 all the time, just in general, atmospheric times (ph), not about an assassination, the sense that Barack Obama is staying in the race for some outside event — not Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton — for some outside event, obviously not this tragedy, but something like another Jeremiah Wright story. There`s a lot of context. And then the horrendous joke by Huckabee last week where he talked about — week before last — where he talked about a noise at an NRA convention, he thinking — let`s say, comically, that it must have been Barack Obama falling off his chair because he saw somebody with a gun, as if that could ever be funny.

After quoting Clinton’s explanation and apology to the Kennedy family, Matthews continued,

“Roger, Jim Clyburn jumped on this. Of course, he said it was beyond the pale. His office put out that statement. The AP story went out that night, the Associated Press, Senator Hillary Clinton referred Friday to the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 — in the 1968 campaign as a reason she should continue to campaign despite increasingly long odds.”

It wasn`t the Barack Obama campaign that went after her, it was the people trying to figure out what she was talking about.”

Regardless of political affiliation, on-air discussion of the Clinton comments mainly stayed appropriate and thoughtful. On Hardball:

“ROGER SIMON, POLITICO.COM: The first rule about talking about political assassination is you never talk about political assassination. I mean, I accept her at her word that she didn`t mean to say any of this, but you just don`t go there. We all have lived in times when a president, or most of us, has been assassinated, when a senator has been assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. There were what, two attempts on the lifes of — on the life of Gerald Ford. It was no — and it was widely reported that Colin Powell did not run for the presidency because his wife was so worried about his physical safety.

We all know why Barack Obama has Secret Service and the other candidates don`t. Hillary Clinton has it because she`s a first lady, former first lady. You don`t go there. Especially if you`re searching for a reason to stay in the race, you don`t want anyone to think it`s because you think something terrible will happen to your chief opponent.

MATTHEWS: Chrystia Freeland, your sense of this story. Does it have a scar (ph) factor here?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND, “FINANCIAL TIMES”: Yes, I think it does. I mean, I think that Roger is right that Hillary Clinton certainly misspoke. But in misspeaking, she broke an unwritten and really important political rule. I think the reason it had so much resonance is it`s really logical to believe that a big reason why Hillary Clinton is staying in the race is she is waiting for some unknown event to befall Barack Obama,  surely not a tragic one, more like a Reverend Wright turbocharged type event.

But I think that`s. . .

MATTHEWS: Yes.”

If it might be argued that the Hillary Clinton of 2016 differs from that of 2008, it is far more apparent that the Chris Matthews of 2016 is different from the Matthews of 2008. Would that we had that earlier Matthews back. He’s starting to look better, in hindsight.

Referencing the horse race

Clinton’s using 1968 as example was the more problematic in being factually wrong on its own terms. The Democratic primary race in 1968 did not go on for very long:

“MATTHEWS: I`d like to go back to the real veracity of what she said because she said that her campaign`s running into June. And I`m often reminded of being on the boardwalk in Cape May one time, watching a Stanley Cup playoff in the summertime, because sometimes, these things do go too long, including sports playoffs.

But the only reason I would have the problem with it right up front is the fact of it. Bobby Kennedy didn`t begin his campaign in 1968 — I`m reading this wonderful book (INAUDIBLE) plug this book, “The Last Campaign” by Thurston Clark [ph]. It`s a heck of a book. You know, it`s a really good book. But it points out again it was a very short campaign. It began in March of `68. And of course, he was assassinated in June.

Bill Clinton`s race was over by March of `92.

CHUCK TODD, NBC POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Right.

MATTHEWS: Why is she claiming these as examples or precedents for staying all the way through June, if she needs them? Why does she need a precedent?

TODD: I don`t know . . .

MATTHEWS: Nobody`s telling her to leave the race. Next week is the end of the primaries. What`s the rush?”

Matthews is basically right: there was no onslaught of advice to Clinton to drop out of the race anyway. She had no need to harp on “June.” Commentator Chuck Todd also noted the oddity of the choice:

“TODD: Well, she`s using the wrong — I mean, if she would use `84, `76 with Reagan…

MATTHEWS: Yes.

TODD: … or `84 with Gary Hart and Mondale, those would be much more factually correct, where the June primaries actually meant something. But I actually think what we`re seeing here is she made a mistake. You know, this idea that somehow she`s staying in the race because something could happen as far as Senator Obama,  when it comes to maybe a scandal or something like that . . .”

June 1976. June 1984. Not June 1968. I remember the 2008 election; you didn’t have to be a Republican to wonder whether Clinton’s wish was father to her thought. The suggestion was logically inescapable.

And as said, it was all over the air waves–this in a year when the major media outlets were overwhelmingly predisposed to treat Clinton as the favorite, from day one.

Last up, on May 27, 2008, NPR’s All Things Considered:

“DANIEL SCHORR:

The holiday weekend has afforded time to reflect on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s apparent inability to understand why so many Americans are upset by her mention of the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Senator Clinton has shown evidence of a tin ear before, but her allusions to a past assassination for whatever reason displayed a deeper disconnect with an American trauma. Her assertion that her husband did not sew up the nomination in 1992 until mid-June, that’s factually wrong. Governor Bill Clinton was generally recognized as the Democratic front-runner from the time that Paul Tsongas withdrew in March, and he said so in his own memoir.

But more troubling was Senator Clinton’s reference to the assassination of Senator Kennedy 40 years ago on June 5th. These are thoughts better not articulated lest they have an effect on some disordered mind. From Lincoln to the Kennedys, we know the unhappy possibilities. We live with the sorrowful awareness that a talented soldier statesman, Colin Powell, agonized about running for president and finally decided against it when his wife, in tears, implored him not to expose himself as a target on the campaign trail. We live with memories that resulted in Senator Obama’s receiving Secret Service protection earlier than any other presidential candidate in history.

In a Washington Post-ABC poll last March, almost six of 10 Americans worried that someone might try to harm Senator Obama. Among African-Americans, the figure was eight of 10. We do not need to be reminded that one of our leaders can suddenly be struck down. Senator Clinton may have thought she was just helping her waning candidacy, but I imagine that she’s reduced her chances of being designated for vice president, only a heartbeat away from the presidency.

This is Daniel Schorr.”

Schorr’s grave and thoughtful commentary underscores the grim resonances of a slip like Clinton’s, in such a context.

Hillary Clinton not only repeatedly used the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as a talking point on the viability of her campaign in 2008. She basically imagined or created the context. Contrary to what Clinton was saying about her husband’s 1992 race, Bill Clinton had wrapped up the race in March, not “June.”

 

 

The Clinton disaster for Democrats continues

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So far, in election 2016, Mrs. Clinton has won primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and possibly Missouri. What commentators call her “Southern sweep” is complete.

Now let’s evaluate her chances of a Southern sweep, or any kind of sweep, or the narrowest electoral win, in 2016. Clinton’s total so far is fifteen states.* Of the fifteen states in which she has defeated or may have defeated a stronger Democrat and much more appealing candidate,

  • Four states–Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas–have not gone Democratic in a presidential election even once since 1976
  • One state–North Carolina–has gone Democratic in a presidential election once since 1976, in Barack Obama’s commanding win in 2008
  • Six states–Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia–have gone Democratic in a presidential election twice since 1976 (Georgia in 1980 and 1992, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee in 1992 and 1996, Virginia in 2008 and 2012)
  • One state–Florida–has gone Democratic in three presidential elections since 1976 (1992, 2008, and 2012)
  • One state–Ohio–has gone Democratic in four presidential elections since 1976 (2008 and 2012, 1992 and 1996)
  • Illinois has gone Democratic in every presidential election from 1992 on
  • Massachusetts has gone Democratic in every presidential election from 1988 on

So far, the electoral math is daunting. Reversing the order above to start with the results most favorable to the Democratic Party,

  • Illinois and Massachusetts combined have 31 electoral votes
  • Ohio and Florida have a combined 47 electoral votes
  • The eleven states which have gone Democratic no more than twice in the past forty years have a combined 62 (never) + 15 (once) + 64 (twice) = 141 electoral votes

So far, that’s 141 electoral votes quite possibly in the GOP column, to 78 votes possibly going Democratic (in an optimistic view of 2016 Illinois and Ohio). Add in Iowa’s six electoral votes for the Dems, and the total goes up to 84.

Run the same numbers more optimistically, and give weight to recent wins for Democratic nominees–or rather, for Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Obama won Virginia in 2008 and 2012 and North Carolina in 2008. Assuming for sake of argument that Hillary Clinton can replicate Obama’s success in both states, that’s another 28 electoral votes plused for Dems, minused for Repubs. The total so far then becomes 113 electoral votes for the GOP, to 106 for the Democrats.

This is Mrs. Clinton’s ‘inexorable’ series of victories in Democratic primaries, vaunted by the national political press, mostly, as a juggernaut. The fact that Clinton’s wins have mostly occurred in solidly red states or dicey swing states has not been foregrounded.

Turnout is discouraged, when media representations relentlessly shove one candidate down the public’s collective throat as inevitable.

Speaking of turnout, let’s look at some other numbers–again, just for the states in which primaries have already taken place. The Economist article linked here summarizes 2016 turnout, the take-away being that–as Trump has said–Trump has boosted GOP turnout over 2008. Primaries won by Clinton had lower turnout than in 2008. Hillary Clinton is no Barack Obama.

There are a few other points to make about 2016 turnout, scanted so far in major media outlets.

  • Except for Louisiana, Democratic turnout in the old Confederacy states has been significantly less than Republic turnout. Alabama had 857,000 GOP votes and 398,000 Democratic votes. Georgia had 1.3 million GOP votes to 761,000 Democratic votes. South Carolina had 741 GOP votes to 371,000 Democratic votes. Virginia had 1.02 million GOP votes to 783,000 Dem. (Louisiana had 301,000 GOP votes and 312,000 Democratic votes.)
  • The same pattern holds for Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas. Clinton’s erstwhile home state of Arkansas had 221,000 Democratic votes to 411,000 for Republicans.
  • Since no one is counting on southern states for the Democrats, it is yet more scary to look at turnout in Ohio last night. GOP votes: 2.04 million. Democratic votes: 1.2 million.
  • Only in Illinois, last night, did Democratic turnout exceed GOP, 1.9 million votes to 1.4 million. And Clinton barely won Illinois.

In my view, the disparity between the major parties in southern states is intensified by set-in-concrete media emphasis on ‘minorities’. Commentators also emphasize ‘minorities’ in northern and midwestern states, of course–county by county, precinct by precinct. I am caucasian myself, but as someone concerned for racial justice I cringe at the relentless pigeonholing that links Democratic votes–or in 2016, Clinton votes–to ‘minorities’ or to ‘African-Americans’. The pigeonholing itself is dispiriting and discourages turnout. The keep-hope-dead crowd is still in there, embedded as ever.

Only candidate Obama was able to overcome these representations; I see no indication that candidate Clinton can–even after hiring some of Obama’s people (disappointingly, David Plouffe went over to Clinton, even though he must remember the 2008 election).

On the less elevated plane of partisan politics, if you want a good thumbnail view of what this linkage does to Democrats in elections, you might look at the electoral history of the state of Mississippi over the last fifty years. “Republican” is effectively a synonym for “white” in Mississippi; thus any precinct in which whites are the majority is effectively a lock for the GOP.

(It also makes me cringe to see stagily diverse, if small, crowds of voters pathetically holding up signs for Clinton that read “Fighting for Us.” When? When did Mrs. Clinton ever fight for ‘us’?)

Back to the electoral college–

Looking at states Mrs. Clinton has won so far, it is hard to envision her game plan for winning the general election in November. In a highly optimistic view, she wins all of New England; California and New York; Maryland and New Jersey; Illinois and Pennsylvania; at least a couple of western states; and enough of the battlegrounds–the old industrial states, Florida, and Virginia–to eke out the total needed. This view disregards the fact that several of the states referred to have recently elected Republican governors or have deep internal divisions among Democrats. What are the Clintons imagining? That Bill Clinton can pull in the states he got in 1992 and 1996? That Hillary Clinton has the same appeal for the minorities her campaign focuses on so much that Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012? That the Republicans, or Trump, will sink themselves–even though Donald Trump and John Kasich are both infinitely better speakers and campaigners than Hillary Clinton? That Hillary Clinton will automatically get all Bernie Sanders voters?

Or do they cling to the idea, regardless of reason or evidence, that there is a national groundswell of devotion to the Clintons?

Bill Clinton in 2016

Or are they counting on their entrenched media supporters to carry them across the finish line?

The most plausible successful scenario I have seen comes from University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato:

 

Electoral college scenario 2016

 

This particular electoral map generates a scary 270 electoral votes for Clinton, 268 for Trump.

This is scary from more than one perspective. One is that a race predicted to be this close carries the seeds of its own defeat, where the public interest is concerned. This is an Al-Gore-in-2000 campaign in the making. In such a scenario, Clinton from her perspective would have every excuse to trim toward ‘centrist’ positions on domestic issues, and to hint at hawkish intentions in foreign policy. She would thus be justified, were she to win the nomination, in ‘pivoting’–that nice media euphemism for abruptly disclosing that the candidate has been lying about her/his positions all along.

That one does not enhance turnout either.

 

More on the 2016 GOP race later.

*Clinton has also won delegates in Iowa, American Samoa, and the Northern Marianas.

Dewey Beats Truman, again –Wrong predictions on health care

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DEWEY BEATS TRUMAN, AGAIN!

2012 wrong predictions on health care

“Surely, as there are mountebanks for the natural body, so are there mountebanks for the politic body; men that undertake great cures, and perhaps have been lucky, in two or three experiments, but want the grounds of science, and therefore cannot hold out. . . So these men, when they have promised great matters, and failed most shamefully, yet (if they have the perfection of boldness) they will but slight it over, and make a turn, and no more ado.”

Francis Bacon, “Of Boldness”

 

George Will

The list of wrong predictions about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on ‘Obamacare’ would be a long, long one. This post will hardly scratch the surface. Still, it is worth pointing out that some of the preeminent newspapers in the United States got it wrong; some cable television channels got the prediction wrong and even went so far as to get the ruling wrong after it came down; and virtually every member of the rightwing noise machine got it wrong.

Erroneous headlines went up first

A few main points:

1)      They said what they were paid to say, of course. Rush-Limbaugh-Land would not have reacted kindly had George F. Will or Charles Krauthammer, for example, suggested that the high court might well uphold much or most of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Koch brothers retreats, the speaker circuits, the book-buying in bulk, even the television appearances designed to reinforce a safe predictability–what David Brock referred to as six-figure speaking fees and seven-figure book contracts—all might threaten to dry up or at least to diminish, if any significant right-wing voices had taken a balanced line with regard to health insurance reform.

2)      This is health care they were talking about. Not predicting the horse race of presidential elections, not the outcome of a senate race. Health care, which in one way or another touches every American.

3)      Not one of them is financially in need of help with regard to health care.

4)      There is no suggestion whatsoever that any editor or producer or othre member of so-called management, at their respective media outlets, will provide guidance or correction, for even the most egregiously ridiculous predictions and bogus arguments about ‘Obamacare’. Far from it.

 

Admittedly not everyone went so far as Forbes, with a blanket prediction that the Supreme Court will strike down all of Obamacare.

But some notable prognosticators spent months overtly campaigning against, and predicting the downfall of, health care reform and/or health insurance reform. (The same experts likewise campaigned, for weeks and months on end, in favor of invading Iraq, and for much the same reasons.) That includes—of course–George F. Will, who used to be referred to as a constitutional scholar, and Charles Krauthammer, who at least once on air advanced his training as a psychiatrist to argue in favor of torture. Krauthammer is a Fox contributor, but Will is employed by ABC. They are both syndicated through the Washington Post Co., through which Colman McCarthy—the noted peace author—used to be syndicated, until both the Washington Post and the Washington Post Writers Group fired him on the same day.

In the wake of the high court’s ruling on health care, both Will and Krauthammer brought out columns this morning spinning the high court’s ruling on health care. Taking Bacon’s impudent fellow as their model, neither columnist volunteers the fact that he himself was wrong, let alone repeatedly wrong, on the question of whether the law would be upheld.

Let’s keep this short. Krauthammer and Will have both predicted the downfall of the law too many times to catalog. For Krauthammer, a few reminders here and here and here and here and above all the 180-degree-wrong prediction here.

For Will, offerings here and here and here, among many others. Will predicted on air that the law would be struck down, and “should be.”

 

The problem is that, as go the big-money columnists, so too often go the journalists—at least in political reporting. Chris Cilizza and Dan Balz of the WashPost may use a different idiom from Will and Krauthammer, but their line of thought is all too similar. Like God, they are always on the side of the big battalions, or what they perceive as the big battalions.

 

One result is that some of the biggest papers in the country have gone for decades as though insurance abuses are among the topics nice people don’t mention, at least in print. A corporate insurance practice of denying claims, whether denial was colorable or not, got outed in fiction by John Grisham, not in reporting by the Times.

Btw I heard about this as ‘company policy’ at one insurance company, anecdotally, myself. It is improbable that no Washington journalist, NYC journalist or Chicago journalist ever heard of it.

UPDATE:

Damn

I thought, ‘Dewey beats Truman’, swear I did. THEN I saw this blog, minutes after posting. It includes the related video: Stranger, go read it.

The more things don’t change: Prufrockian candidates for a played-out Wall Street-owned GOP

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The more things don’t change

Recycling old political talent is the special province of Wall Street defenders and apologists, and we’ve been seeing a lot of it since November 2008. In fact, most of the smarmiest and most uncouth attacks on the president have come from recycled consultants, money men and white-collar goon squads whom it would be flattery to call hacks. They get used by the GOP mainly for two reasons: one, the GOP—as Willie Sutton said about banks—is where the money is, and they can get well paid for their efforts; and two, the GOP needs all the hired help it can get because it has no inspiration to offer. As I said years ago, basically the contest is people on one side, money on the other.

 

Wisconsin Gov. Walker

So the same worn ideas get fed into the public discourse, or rather, the same slogans and euphemisms get trotted out, to obfuscate the same attacks on the public weal. Examples are easy to find—‘debt’ and ‘budget’ and thrift-associated language, used to justify the gigantic unthrift of throwing money at the top; vilifying ‘big government’ and ‘regulation’, to prevent essential reforms in everything from mines to giant banks acting as stockbrokers without accountants.

 

Iconic street sign

To deliver the smoke bombs, smoke-and-mirrors or smokescreens—pick your metaphor—the same conveyances get used over and over. Massive paid advertising on television, financed by PACS and super PACS, is the most overt example and a given. Airing right now in the DC area, there’s one about President Obama’s ‘broken promises’—the national debt being the main example. Predictably, the (pro-Romney) ad does not mention that the Republicans’ trillion-dollar wars and trillion-dollar tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations produced the debt, or that the last outgoing Democratic administration left a budget surplus, or that Republicans in Congress have opposed every federal cost-saving measure in health care. Et cetera.

This is not to say that the lexicon is completely unvarying. In the wake of the most recent Wall Street disasters—JP Morgan Chase and Facebook—we are actually hearing a little discussion, in public, about ‘too big to fail’ and related problems including lack of scrutiny, in the business press and on cable business programs. There are even corporate-media commentators saying mildly critical things about the hand that feeds them. So what do they (currently) go after? Excessive executive compensation? Bonuses? Lack of capital reserves? Lack of tangible assets? Excessive ‘leverage’, aka debt? Millions spent on lobbying and on cost-ineffective legal defenses in court? Bad investments? A blindly greedy merger-and-acquisition focus resulting in offshoring, outsourcing and layoffs that cut into their own customer base? A determined refusal to boost sales by improving product and service?

Get real.

No, lately they’re going after—wait for it—companies that pay dividends. ‘Dividends’ is the new dirty word on Wall Street. The temerity of those companies that would actually reward their investors, you know, pay something back to the millions of people who enable the companies to stay alive . . . The argument seems to be that a company that pays out stock dividends—watch out for the word ‘austerity’ in this context*–is engaging in crowd-pleasing mountebankery, sort of like reminding the public of public health and public safety issues in a political context.

Sigh. (Note: Income from dividends, as from capital gains, is still income and IMO should be taxed as such.)

Does U.S. stand for Usual Suspects?

Back to the same-old.

Not only do we get the same words and slogans, the same tactics, and the same delivery system, we also get many of the same personnel. Naturally former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, in politics for most of his life, and GOP lifetime honchos in Congress—Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner–are in the old sleaze game up to their hips. Naturally some of our least distinguished representatives preying upon the southeastern states—Rep. Joe “You lie!” Wilson—are carrying on as ever, sustained by money, ignorance and prejudice. Naturally some of our longest-serving GOP congressmen continue to represent rural districts and continue to turn an ever blind eye to the meth labs fueling their local economy. Take a close look at the Conroe, Texas, region for a good example of GOP-dominated law and order at work. Or not.

Meth residue? --No problem.

Naturally some of the same old hands also continue to operate less conspicuously behind the scenes. George H. W. Bush’s national co-chairman Peter Terpeluk, Jr., is one of the names behind the GOP’s infamous 2010 ‘Joker’ campaign strategy, reported by Politico. Despite the hoopla over the Tea Party, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), writing rightwing state laws around the country, continues to work through local non-movers and non-shakers ensconced in state GOP hierarchies. NationofChange reports that the anti-Newt Gingrich ads produced by a pro-Romney super-PAC came via some of the consultants who bestowed on us the Willie Horton and ‘swift boat’ ads of 1988 and 2004. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that retreads from the GWBush administration, the GHWBush administration, ghosts of Congress past and longtime GOP consultancies dominate the political discourse as reported in media, just as they serve as gatekeepers to the political process, often for both major parties. Former Sen. Rick Santorum, after being ousted from his senate seat by Pennsylvania voters, kept his hand in in Washington, D.C., by working as a lobbyist until entering the 2012 presidential election contest—a point only tepidly acknowledged during the season of Santorum’s peak attention.

All this goes far to explain why the general public often turns away from the political process—a turning away that benefits exactly the people and companies who cause it—and why the national political press has lost so much credibility, especially among younger voters.

The damage is exacerbated when national media attention goes to some of the most transparently spent, used-up, reused and hauled-out-of-storage media personalities in politics, who emerge from other operations to present or to re-present themselves as candidates for high office. Viz Donald Trump. Rudy Giuliani. Rick Perry. Newt Gingrich?!? Do the fans-of-prominence writing for major newspapers and the television networks honestly believe, in their hearts of hearts, that anyone out there—aside from flaming overt racial bigots–didn’t look at the Gingrich candidacy and say, inwardly if not to the family-room walls aloud, Really?!?

The larger corporate media outlets always lean corporate-ward. It’s in their DNA. Thus we have a spatelet of reports the past few days emphasizing Romney’s money draw. Not that Romney doesn’t pull in big bucks from his fellow Wall Streeters, of course; that’s a given. But the Center for Public Integrity reports that the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee nearly doubled the haul of Romney and the GOP for April.

If Romney and the GOP had done the same (instead of the reverse), the headlines in the WashPost among other capital media outlets would have been bigger (instead of nonexistent).

Nor is the heavy reliance on used-up retreads in the GOP getting the political analysis in news media that it deserves. Perhaps nowhere is this breathtaking blandness about the unthinkable more apparent than in regard to the Commonwealth of Virginia, where the GOP frontrunner for senator now is George Allen.

Yes, Mr. Macaca himself is currently the foremost candidate for the Republican Party nomination for U.S. Senate in the Birthplace of Presidents.

 

So much for lessons learned from Penn State

This is the kind of thing that makes the work of satirists so difficult.

 

Remember the big news about Gov. Allen during his last senate campaign—which was in 2006? It was his mother’s descent from a Jewish family in Tunisia. Unknown to Allen himself in his growing-up years, he had a Daniel Deronda story in his background; his mother was part of the Lumbroso family. –And widespread news reports were followed by inevitable commentary along the lines of look-what-George-Allen-found-out. My own take was a little different: Forget what George Allen found out. Look what the Lumbrosos found out.

The Lumbroso family in Europe, called the ‘Italian Rothschilds’, seems to be a family not just of wealth but of some distinction. Along with companies headed, family members have contributed significantly to the arts as well as to industry; it’s all a rather scintillating heritage of culture as well as presumably of status. So they find Our American Cousin and whom do they get? –George Allen. Where they could in another distribution of DNA have scored a Madeleine Albright or a John Kerrey or at least a step-grandparent of Hillary Clinton, instead the Lumbrosos get this shit-kicker, and not a real shit-kicker either, but the synthetic self-identified kind born in Whittier, Calif., grew up in Los Angeles and Chicago, son of a famous football coach, in the Senate via the University of Virginia on top of his father’s reputation; sort of the plastic kind of shit-kicker you hang from your rear-view mirror driving away from Lubbock. What my late father used to call a drugstore cowboy. You can always tell a drugstore cowboy at a glance; he’s the one who wears cowboy boots with his business suits because he has never been informed that boots are for riding, not walking. That’s why cowboy boots have those high heels canted back on high arches, to keep the feet in the stirrups. Traditionally they used to be made for sinewy little guys with aristocratic small feet.

If Allen turns up wearing a yarmulke prior to Virginia’s GOP senate primary on June 12—unlikely—or the general election Nov. 6, it will be no more spurious than, or less spurious than, his boots.

 

Speaking of remakes–

 

I have not seen the remake of All the King’s Men, with Sean Penn in the role earlier played by Broderick Crawford, so am not reading through any review of it or reading down to the bottom of comment about it. My question is whether the movie retains the ending in the Robert Penn Warren novel or goes with the revisionist moralized ending. I hope that Hollywood has had the decency to go back to the original ending rather than to the bowdlerized one, but I don’t want to know before seeing the film.

That said, All the King’s Men is still not a very strong book. Robert Penn Warren found himself with the ungracious task of trying to contain Huey Long, who had been assassinated eleven years before but who was bigger than Willie Stark, and bigger than Warren. The prose is padded with misogynistic, repetitive descriptions of female beauty aging, a kind of rhapsodizing adored by insecure Prufrockian guys who in another generation used to subscribe to National Geographic so they could look at naked native ladies without censure.

 

Southern politicians are a rare example of a political topic handled as badly by popular culture, including fiction, as by the big news outlets.

 

*Or any context.

 

Btw The saying that “The more things change, the more they stay the same” is a tiresome saying. Planet on one side, cynical superficialities on the other. The problem is not things changing or staying the same per se; the problem is failing to distinguish between better and worse.

Ad wars in Florida not just money, ads

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Ad wars in Florida not just money, ads

 They couldn’t work without an element of verite.

Talking Points Memo runs this piece on Florida today, reporting that Romney forces are outspending Gingrich forces there five-to-one.

“The Dems think these figures suggest something else: that it’s not Romney who’s winning votes in Florida, but the size of his wallet. ”

Point taken. However, these trend lines should not be over-simplified.

Certainly money has a devastatingly corrosive effect in politics. So do infamous ad campaigns–Willie Horton, the Osama bin Laden attacks on Max Cleland in Georgia, etc. This writer opposes on constitutional grounds any notion that a) money is speech, or b) corporations are persons.  The effect of the unanswered ads against Gingrich in Iowa is now part of the history of election 2012.

But the success of that ad campaign went beyond money. The ads were devastating because they showed Gingrich in live and still footage doing things he actually did, because they revived press accounts of Gingrich’s actual deeds.

Romney ads are not the only ones playing in Florida. As another local source points out, pro-Gingrich ads are running every ten minutes in Miami, in rush hour–in Spanish. The line is always the same. The ads attack not Romney but Obama.

“Same ad.  The ad attacked only Obama–the theme was broken promises–jobs, housing. ”

At a guess, it is aimed at Hispanics facing either foreclosure or pink slips, or who know someone who does face either one, betting the farm that the voters will blame the president and will see Gingrich as the GOPer best poised to oppose the White House.

Gingrich

It is hard to imagine Gingrich flying high in the Latino demographic. This has less to do with Cuba than with how he comes across–as disrespectful and presumptuous. Aiming over Romney’s head at the Rose Garden is liable to look much the same way, as far as I can tell.

‘Broken promises’ looks to be the line against Obama in the general election, at this point. They must be hoping for an awful lot of amnesia, even more than usual, given the state of the economy at the end of the GWBush administration and the GOP opposition to every improvement since.

One big question about election 2012 right now is whether the amnesia will be facilitated, or how much, by news media predisposed to a ‘close election’.

Revisiting the 2004 election, part 7: Florida

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2004 election revisited, part 7: Florida further

Following up previous posts

Obama at SOTU

President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night demonstrated again the greater quality of this president over the loon rhetoric coming from our current GOP debates. The quality gap is huge, and growing larger.

Mitt Romney

As written before, the guys coming out of the GOP field are going to need all the help they can get at election time, and previous elections involve some warning signs. Forewarned is forearmed.

In the 2000 election, 25 Florida counties used the maligned punch-card ballots, 41 used op-scan, and one county used paper ballots counted manually. Seventeen counties switched to optical scanners for the 2004 election.

Florida

Counties that switched from punch-card to op-scan did not necessarily show the biggest swings to Bush, but there was a distinct difference—in Bush’s favor–between op-scan counties and other counties. The picture over-all:

  • Total registered voters in the 15 counties using touch-screens:  5,576,264
  • Total registered voters in the 52 counties using op-scan ballots:  4,725,026
  • Outcome in the touch-screen counties:  Kerry 1,983,210 to Bush 1,845,876
  • Outcome in the op-scan counties:  Bush 2,110,414 to Kerry 1,591,790

Statistics come from election results and from election researcher Kathy Dopp’s analysis of touch-screen machines versus optical-scan paper voting in 2004.

There were further differences between op-scan voting results and touch-screen results, Florida 2004:

  • 15 Florida counties used touch-screen voting machines. Only 3 of these counties showed a 100+ percent jump in Republican votes, and 3 others showed a 100+ percent jump in Democratic votes. Neither party jumped more than 120 percent.
  • 52 counties used op-scan ballots. Of these, 43 showed a triple-digit jump for Republicans, two for Democrats. One had a whopping 602 percent jump in votes for Repubs, one over 400 percent, and two over 300 percent. Another ten op-scan counties had an over 200 percent jump in votes for Repubs. Nothing equivalent for Dems.

Leaving the eye-blearing numbers aside, think about the larger context of the 2004 election. Was John Kerry two or three times less popular in Florida in 2004 than Al Gore in 2000? Was GWBush—after the escape of Osama bin Laden, the invasion of Iraq, the war profiteering, the tax cuts for the rich—two or three times more appealing?

Back to those voting machines

Only three counties using op-scan machines had larger jumps for Democrats than for Republicans. The percentages below are vote gains, 2000 to 2004:

 (Dem Senate candidate Betty Kastor won Flagler County over Mel Martinez.)

Only four counties using op-scan had balanced percentage jumps in party voting:

Note that where the jump in voting by party was balanced, the outcomes were also reasonably divided. No one party or candidate (Bush) won all the time.

Turnout always matters.

Ten Florida counties with biggest turnout by number, in 2004:

  • Miami-Dade:  772,743
  • Broward:  707,202
  • Palm Beach:  547,340
  • Hillsborough:  464,253
  • Pinellas:  457,426
  • Orange:  388,095
  • Duval:  379,257
  • Brevard:  265,764
  • Lee:  242,434
  • Volusia:  229,098

Of these, Brevard, Duval, Orange, and Volusia used op-scan voting.

Ten Florida counties with highest turnout by percentage of registered voters, in 2004:

  • Flagler:  81.9% –jump gap only 102 to 103, Bush won, but close
  • Sarasota:  81.6%
  • Jefferson:  80.7% –jump gap 171 to 61, Kerry won
  • Leon:  79.8% –jump gap 105 to 81, Kerry won
  • Lee:  79.5%
  • Nassau:  79.2%
  • St Johns:  79% –jump gap 100 to 84, Bush won
  • Sumter:  79%
  • Brevard:  78.6% –jump gap 101 to 89, Bush won
  • Gadsden:  78.5% –jump gap 207 to 66, Kerry won

Of these, Brevard, Flagler, Gadsden, Jefferson, Leon and St Johns used op-scan voting. Nobody flipped the elections in Gadsden or Jefferson and Leon counties.

Ten Florida counties with lowest turnout by percentage of registered voters:

  • Hendry 57.2%
  • Osceola 63.3%
  • DeSoto 64% –jump gap 146 to 44, Bush won
  • Okeechobee 65.7% –jump gap 126 to 47, Bush won
  • Union 66.7% –jump gap 263 to 23, Bush won
  • Broward 66.8%
  • Dixie 66.9% –jump gap 305 to 26, Bush won
  • Hamilton 67.1% –jump gap 244 to 37, Bush won
  • Putnam 68.5% –jump gap 144 to 47, Bush won
  • Highlands 69.6% –jump gap 77 to 44, Bush won

Of these, DeSoto, Dixie, Hamilton, Highlands, Okeechobee, Putnam and Union all used op-scan voting. Low turnout, discouraged voters, unappealing voting technology—Bush swept.

The pattern held in the ten counties with lowest voter turnout by number, in 2004. Numbers are local turnout as reported:

  • Liberty 3,051 –Bush won
  • Lafayette 3,352 –Bush won
  • Glades 4,204 –Bush won
  • Union 4,714 –Bush won
  • Hamilton 5,131 –Bush won
  • Franklin 5,973 –Bush won
  • Calhoun 6,006 –Bush won
  • Dixie 6,472 –Bush won
  • Gilchrist 7,047 –Bush won
  • Hardee 7,281 –Bush won

Of these, all used op-scanned paper ballots, and all went for Bush. We have a winner.  Were they Florida’s ten smallest counties? Not quite: A list of the state’s ten smallest counties would bump Hardee, Gilchrist, Dixie, and Union. Baker, Bradford, Gulf, Holmes, Jefferson, Madison, Taylor, Wakulla and Washington all had populations in the twenty-something thousand range. The smallest counties also all used op-scan ballots, so we have another winner: Of these, only Jefferson went for Kerry, and Madison was close.

On a brighter note, in all these counties but Hardee, about half the total population (2000 census) turned out to vote–not too shabby for the lowest numerical turnout in the state. It was a high-interest election.

The middle

Continuing the test of brain-strain, let’s look at some middling turnout. Since the highest turnout ran 82% and the lowest percentage about 57%, midpoint would be about 70%.

Ten Florida counties with mid-range turnout, 2004:

  • Charlotte:  70.4%
  • Glades:  70.5% –jump gap 134 to 37, Bush won
  • Hardee:  70% –jump gap 182 to 32, Bush won
  • Okaloosa:  70.5% –jump gap 95 to 61, Bush crushed
  • Calhoun:  71.9% –jump gap 381 to 30, Bush won
  • Highlands:  69.6% –jump gap 77 to 54, Bush won
  • Pasco:  72.1%
  • Santa Rosa:  69.9% –jump gap 97 to 54, Bush won
  • Putnam:  68.5% –jump gap 144 to 47, Bush won
  • Polk:  71.5% –jump gap 107 to 68, Bush won

Of these, all but Charlotte and Pasco counties used op-scan. Charlotte and Pasco had predictable results, in line with voter registration and with voter turnout, with some crossover (Dem for Charlotte, Repub for Pasco).

I wrote on this material at the time.

A similar analysis can be found here. The author further pursues similar anomalies in the rural areas of other southern states. The author sums up:

“I started this page when I first saw the breakdown by voting machine of the results in Florida. Since the way people vote shouldn’t depend on the machines they use, it seemed to signal cheating. A careful examination of the voting patterns in Florida in 2000 and in Louisiana in 2000, however, has led me to conclude that the difference was due to the lopsided use of the opscan machines in rural northern Florida counties where there is a preponderance of “Dixiecrats”. A statistical analysis of the data from the 1996 election also supports this conclusion. The remainder of this page contains my analysis and reasoning in detail.”