The Obama Derangement Syndrome has reached Stage Four when Jane Hamsher blames the president for not supporting Blanche Lincoln sufficiently.
…Lincoln’s vote for his health care bill cost her dearly, and without Specter’s vote for the stimulus, it never would have happened.
Now I don’t feel the least bit sorry for either of them, but it doesn’t say anything good about Obama that he would abandon them in the clinch like that either.
The story is supposed to be that the president hates liberals and loves conservadems like Blanche Lincoln and Arlen Specter. But, when that story doesn’t quite add up, the story shifts to ‘the president doesn’t stick up for his friends’. If you try hard enough, you can criticize the president for taking a crap. If you can read that piece and find a Democrat-supporting author, you have more familiarity than I do with the crack pipe.
Also, too…Rahm!!
Lol. Question: Who did Hamsher support in the primaries? J/w.
The Presidential? Neither. And if you remember, she was the one who originally posted that video of the PUMA going nuts outside the DNC meeting. So, I don’t think she was a Hillary supporter either(despite what others claim).
My God, Calvin.
FDL made a decision to be neutral. But she was personally an ardent-Clinton supporter. If that didn’t shine through for you in reading her coverage of the campaign, then I can confirm it for you from private email correspondence on a listserv.
Back then, she was complaining that her audience was accusing her of bias and the comments at FDL had grown toxic. I advised her to give up the pretense of neutrality and the problem would go away. Blog readers want to know where people stand, and they didn’t for a moment think she was really neutral. No one was.
She never came right out and said it on FDL. She never officially endorsed anyone(the nearest I ever remember any of the top names endorsing anyone was Kos .. but IIRC .. that was more him betting who was going to win .. because of his opinion .. based on whatever information/feeling he had). Besides, given that she despises HolyJoe(and who doesn’t) I didn’t see why she would endorse Hillary. As you remember back then, a lot of the blogs refused to endorse anyone offically(during the primaries). I know Atrios didn’t. What he thought privately? I don’t know. Just because you have private information on who Jane, or Atrios, or any other semi-known liberal blogger supported privately doesn’t mean that the rest of us know.
Atrios endorsed Obama.
Markos endorsed Obama.
I endorsed Obama.
Bowers endorsed Obama.
Armando pretended to endorse Obama.
While some people were for Edwards initially, after he dropped out, the vast majority of progressive bloggers endorsed Obama.
FDL did not. I believe that the reason for that was that there was no agreement among the front-pagers.
But Hamsher wrote story lines throughout that were beneficial to Clinton. And her readers, who were anti-DLC to the core, called her on it every single day.
I can’t read her mind on why Lieberman is a problem and Clinton is not. So, I am not going to make a conjecture. I will say that in email and even once on Twitter, I’ve reprimanded her for what I considered racially insensitive remarks. She also likes to throw around accusations of misogyny willie-nillie.
Didn’t she get started in this by working for Ned Lamont campaign?
I first heard of her when she was a diarist at Daily Kos. I admired her work and recommended it many times.
Funny – I first heard about her in a way totally unrelated to politics. Rather, I read her wonderful book about making Natural Born Killers with Oliver Stone many years ago. Her partner Don Murphy stayed in the industry and is a big-time producer now.
I used to really like Jane, but she completely jumped the shark on the health care reform. In doing so she lost many readers (like me) but also an ability to shape the broader public discourse – because I never see her on teevee anymore.
That’s when I first heard of her. I don’t know if she got paid, but she did work for it(meaning canvassing and such .. and she actually moved up there for a while).
I think she wrote (on Kos) that she moved out East to work for Ned Lamont, wrote something about having prev. worked in Hollywood,
or that she happened to be visiting out East and noticed his campaign and got involved then moved here
Dasm!! I read Atrios pretty religiously, and only now(thanks to Teh Google) did I see he endorse anyone. It was low-key, that’s for sure.
It was clear as daylight she was a Hillary supporter. Nothing against her on that front. I was an Edwards supporter before moving to Obama. When she posted Joe Lieberman in blackface back in 2006, I lost a lot of respect for her. The utter lack of sensitivity was shocking. There’s more to the Obama Derangement Syndrome than just policy differences — I can tell you that.
Yup.
I don’t think it’s about Obama at this point. It’s about Hamsher and her own personal manias and demons, whatever they may be.
It’s about inside-the-Beltway DC and the fact that she hasn’t gotten a victory since she moved there and started hanging out with the DC insiders.
And there’s a heck of a lot demonic inside the Beltway.
Poor Blanche. Suffering for supporting the party to which she allegedly belongs. Oh the humanity.
Yep. That one was over the top.
The main problem with Jane Hamsher . . .
is that people pay her too much attention.
WHY WON’T YOU STOP PUNCHING THE HIPPIES!!!!
bwahahahaha!
Good ‘ol firebagger Jane.
Hamsher is not the base, someone has to tell her that and kick her the hell out of the democratic party. She goes around claiming the base mantle and the progressive mantle and man, she sure jumped in front of the bullet when Gibb’s made the “professional left” comment, which of course has morphed into Obama’s statement with these….insert your favorite slur.
I just heard Sam Stein say that by Obama telling people to go out and vote, he is not recognizing their pain or some horseshit like that. WTF, why on earth would “progressives” have trouble with Biden and Obama telling them to get out the vote. That’s like what they are supposed to do, you know. You ever hear of this thing called the election, that quaint little notion that keeps assholes like Sharon Angle and Rand Paul and Christine O’Donnell from going to Washington. This is serious shit, and the Hamshers want to whine and cry about being scolded. As Republicans are pumping mountains of “Citizen’s United” cash all over the fucking place, the firebaggers have had their feelings hurt. Oh poor widdle firebaggers, someone hurt my feewings. You dumb fucks are about to destroy some more of my granddaughters future because you have been throwing a perpetual temper tantrum, kicking and screaming on the floor like a spoiled 3 year old. I’m sick of those crybabies, and I fully support what Biden and Obama said about this. They know that “the base” is not Jane, Glenn, Cenk, Arianna, Ed…and their minions.
end rant
I don’t she claims either to be the base or to be the Democratic Party.
As for her commenters, not all progressives are Democrats. Some long for a third party. Some are left of the current political discourse. And some of the Democratic commenters go awry by thinking they are the exclusive base of the Democratic Party when Democrats are a big-tent party, at the moment ideologically a very big tent.
one more thing….I never nominated those assholes to represent me as a progressive. The arrogance they have claiming to be the base is sickening. Who is the leader of this fucking movement anyway? They need to tell the firebaggers to STFU.
I never go over to FDL but I decided I should actually read the entire article.
It’s unseemly to kick sand in the face of your own base (and here I’m talking about Unions too) to get in a worse candidate and then drop her when she is bombing as bad as everyone knew she would. That’s just politics, but it doesn’t make the administration look good.
Booman, I don’t think your OP accurately conveys what Jane was saying, which I think was summarized pretty cogently in her headline: Obama’s criticism of the left doesn’t make much sense as a means for generating voter enthusiasm, but makes a lot of sense as a means for planting the narrative that will explain away electoral losses as caused by something other than Obama.
The Lincoln example was obviously just one of several that seemed consistent with the latter hypothesis. She wasn’t criticizing Obama for failing to support Lincoln per se — she obviously would have loved for him to support Halter instead of Lincoln in the primary — but pointing out that distancing yourself from your party’s candidate prior to the general election would seem to guarantee that your party’s candidate will get fewer votes than if you don’t distance yourself.
I’m not a professional politician, but Hamsher’s point here seems so eminently sensible that I find it hard to believe that you actually disagree with it, Booman. If so, I don’t see how it remotely qualifies as evidence that Hamsher’s political judgment is somehow clouded by her antipathy towards the current WH occupants.
Please.
Her point is take shots. The details vary. You’re dealing with the surface.
Blanche Lincoln is going down to defeat because the demographics of her state have changed. Is Lincoln even asking Obama for support? I doubt it.
For Jane, it’s just another needle stick in her Obama doll.
I like Jane’s thinking on a number of issues, but she totally lost me with the Grover Norquist stunt — and now she’s doing it again. She’s like a child that just wants to tip over the game board and send the pieces flying. It may be great performance art, but I don’t see what else it accomplishes.
For my money, Jane could better serve the liberal cause if she went into street theater. She’d be great at that, and street theater serves an important purpose. But she is not helping as a blogger. Whatever it is she and others think she’s illuminating, it’s not policy and it’s not “the issues.”