Hillary Clinton launched her campaign and Maureen Dowd is predictably grumpy about it. Me? I’m just bored. Mind-numbingly, crushingly bored. So, it’s telling that I don’t find much of anything in Dowd’s column to agree with. I don’t give a crap about style points.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Geez! I had the opposite reaction.
I thought the video was brilliant, and I’m kinda pumped about the start of the most important feminist election cycle in U.S. history.
Whatever is the opposite of pumped, that is what I am.
This is like people telling me that:
I kind of have to care, but I’d rather watch Scooby Doo.
There’s no reason to denigrate Fast & Furious. It is the first major movie franchise to have an almost entirely minority cast and make insane money. Hollywood has been saying for decades now that they can’t put minorities in starring roles or supporting minority driven films because they don’t make money overseas. F&F proves that wrong again and again.Seriously, what other franchise movie has all of the major love interests as Latinas, lets the actresses get to be involved in the main action plot and not have to settle for just being sex objects, 2 AA leads and an Asian actor who gets to be cool and not the nerdy side-kick or martial arts expert?
As for Hillary’s announcement video, it was a snoozefest. It was so clearly focus tested to death and had no authenticity to it at all. It looked like it was crafted by the same ad team that does insurance or financial company ads. I much preferred Obama’s speech at Springfield and wish Hillary had done something more authentic and inspiring.
Kudos for such a worthy defense of the F&F franchise.
Boo, it was a good vid. It looked sincere, she was pushing for the fairness and inequality issues we all care so much about, and she managed to seem confident without being arrogant. Even a lot of the HillaryHaters(tm) liked it. And it’s NOT like anything I’ve seen and especially not like earlier Clinton approaches. Are you feeling burnt out?
… and btw, who would ever care what MoDo writes – ever? She hates HRC. She hates the President. She’s sickening. Why bother reading her?
Do yourself a favor!
Because what ever dumb Schlesinger heir runs the paper now thinks it’s a good idea to put her on the op-ed page. Why does Obama invite Tom Friedman, and other jokers, to the White House? Tommy writes as much dreck as MoDo does.
The only NYT columnist I bother paying any attention to is Paul Krugman. I don’t think Kristof is terribly stupid, but I never got into reading his columns. Friedman, Brooks, Douthat, Dowd – all horrible. I have a special dislike for Dowd in that years ago, before 9/11, she actually made me sympathize with George W. Bush because she wrote such a disgustingly vapid and mean-spirited column at his expense. And I loathed W. already, but her column was so personal and stupid that it really offended me. W was a horrible President with few ethics and a very different moral code from me, but Maureen Dowd couldn’t be bothered to attack him on things that mattered. I’ve never read a thing she has written since.
I’ll give Dowd this; she has a writing style and seems to enjoy writing. The other three just phone it in. There’s no point in reading anything they write; I know what they’ll say before they even do. Dilettante “journalists” each and every one.
I agree with your estimation of Dowd, except I always feel I have to add one more thing: about once every two or three months, or maybe a few times a year, she actually writes a good column. Friedman occasionally writes an almost coherent piece, Brooks never, ever.
Nobody wants to admit this about MoDo, in fear of spoiling her almost perfect record, but in the interests of historical accuracy I feel I must say it.
It takes a village to elect a President. If she’s going to do it, it has to be one authentic gladhand at a time. She might start by charming some people in western Iowa. Retail politics done right could have impact on the Congress.
But yes, eighteen months out is kinda of too early to think about the 2016 election. Even 10 months out is too much time, but by then the primaries will be in the thick of it.
I don’t get this. If you build a subdivision, make a movie, do a clinical trial, build a road, get an education, start a new product, or any other of a zillion important things, you generally have to think far more than eighteen months ahead. For most important things you have to think years or even decades ahead.
So why does who gets the most powerful elected office in the world, where more than 100 million people participate, require such a short decision period?
of course they’re thinking about it, just not announcing and campaigning – to spare us the continuous campaign. making a movie takes 10+ years give or take, but after you finish it’s done. with a presidential campaign, after you finish you’re just getting started with the real task.
Would it make any difference if she announced in October? Or at least after Labor Day?
Yes, she already needs to be fundraising. There are legal obligations, I understand, that you have to be running officially to do some essential things like rent office space. And apparently she wants public input into her platform, and you can’t do that secretly.
Even if it weren’t for legal issues, at this point real candidates need to be doing substantive and publically visible work (like fundraising, policy proposals, and hiring, for starters). Not announcing is just a farce. She already dragged it on too long. Supposedly she wasn’t absolutely sure she wanted to run and didn’t want to commit yet. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt on that.
I’d be surprised if she was unsure about running. Probably unsure about when to make the formal announcement.
I was hoping she could delay a few more months, as these campaigns are already ridiculously long, but for the reasons you mention, plus getting beat up for weeks over trivial matters whipped up by the media, she needed to get out there a little earlier. Still it’s very early for this type of nearly unopposed primary campaign.
“eighteen months out is kinda of too early to think about the 2016 election … “
True, and yet people have been thinking about it very heavily for at least a year already.
Maureen Dowd sees the radical right wing movement work for decades to deconstruct the mediocre campaign finance laws which existed before Citizens United, and then has the unmitigated gall to close her snotty, unpersuasive column by complaining about the amount of money Clinton will need to raise to get elected and overcome the Bullshit Mountain which is coming her way, the Mountain which Maureen has and will continue to build with her sticky, fecal-stained fingers.
Fuck Maureen Dowd.
Booman…it’s “style points” that win elections. WTFU. It’s been that way since the JFK-Nixon debates. Bet on it. You actually think that elusive ingredient that we laughingly call “substance” is the deciding factor? Really? Please. Branding is all. Watch.
AG
P.S. It looks to me as if HRC is actively trying to throw this election. Go here for evidence. I don’t think she really wants the bother anymore. She’s just going through the tomato-can steps to a well-earned retirement. Watch. If there is a better way to alienate the swing voters of this country…almost all white, middle class and conservative in their sexual preferences to say the least…I cannot imagine what it might be.
She’s the tomato can in this first round of fixed elimination bouts.
Watch.
AG
Funny. First round of elimination bouts of whom, exactly? You pinning your hopes in Linc Chafee??
You’ll find out soon enough that your kinda silly idea that HRC isn’t serious, so no point in arguing about it. I would point out, though, that probably no more than a couple thousand people in this country know the name “Mook” and even fewer give a darn about his eccentricities.
“Swing voters,” btw, are largely a myth, and if a couple quick shots of gay couples and blah people are going to turn some people off, they weren’t going to vote Democratic anyway.
You write:
Do not underestmate the audience of “Mather Jones.” A few thousand?
Not.
And that’s just the first layer. Then the aggregators distribute it, and then the other news media pick up on it and send their own hacks to amplify/comment upon it. Like a weighty pebble thrown in the water, the ripples spread and spread. Watch. HRC’s people know this. Watch. It’s the way things are done now.
Watch.
AG
No idea what AG’s trying to say here between all the usual cryptic, dark portents.
His first post seemed to say that Hillary was intentionally “…alienat(ing) the swing voters of this country…” by hiring a gay campaign director. Now he’s saying that Hillary’s campaign is doomed because a massive media ripple will turn this report, a very unsensational combination of rumor-mongering and beat-sweetening, into…what? Good God, nobody who matters gives a tinker’s damn about who a campaign manager want to sleep with. Who’s elevating “branding before substance” there?
I take it back- I don’t want to know what AG thinks the media ripple will turn this into to swamp the Clinton campaign. His explanation will be ponderous and loony, kind of like his armchair psychiatric analysis which claimed that this Mook story proves that Hillary doesn’t want to win the Presidency.
THAT is a novel bit of analysis, I’d admit.
You write:
It’s the “nobody who matters” part that tells your tale. Who “matters?” The voters matter, that’s who. And who are the voters? They are largely anti-homosexual, that’s who they are. No amount of media blitz is going to change that. Sorry, but there it is.
You think not? Dress yourself up in some truly gay-branding attire…and I don’t care whether it’s male or female-style… and walk into almost any working class-level bar, diner or fast food joint in the country. Keep your social antennae up and functioning (If you have any, of course…a valid question in your case.) and gauge the reactions.
C’mon…
Here you have the deliberate positioning of a very powerful campaign manager…at least I assume it’s deliberate, because if it isn’t it’s just politically numb on a truly grand, losing scale…who is himself quite deliberately branding himself as “gay.” I believe that the Clintons have been so rich and so powerful for so long that they have totally lost touch with the mood of the non-elite voting public and have bought into their own rhetoric. You don’t? We shall see, soon enough. i think she’s going to get swamped, myself. Billion dollar campaign and all. She’s lost it.
Or…she’s playing the patsy.
Either way, she’s already a goner.
Watch.
AG
Progressives confuse approval of gays (which there is not) with tolerance (which there is sometimes).
Precisely. i don’t think that “tolerance” will translate to the voting booth, however.
We shall see, soon enough.
AG
Why screen your homophobia through dark electoral predictions due to Clinton’s choice for campaign manager? Here’s a public statement from Hillary that gives people like you a REAL excuse to reject her:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/22/clinton-gay-rights-are-human-rights/
She’s been on the record on this issue for at least a half-decade.
I guess in order to believe that Hillary is toast we have to pretend that the electorate has become more homophobic since 2012:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304070304577394332545729926
Feel free to make the case.
You write:
Not “more” homophobic, centerfielddj. Not less, either. Just about the same, looks like to me. Just to be sure, go ahead and do what I suggested elsewhere. I do not have a clue about your own sexual preferences, but dress yourself up like a NYC denizen of gay Christopher St. and go visit say…oh, I don’t know…
Downtown Portland, ME.
Boston’s Roxbury or Southie areas.
Any part of Southern Indiana.
Downtown York or Stroudsburg, PA.
Albany, GA.
Downtown Salt Lake City, NV.
Dealey Square in Dallas, TX.
Any bar or diner in Levittown, NY.
The corner of W. 138th St. and Malcolm X Blvd. in Manhattan, NY.
The Dunkin’ Donuts in Milford, MA.
Downtown Thomaston, ME.
And so on and so forth throughout the working class bastions of the U.S…and these are only the ones I have visited over the past couple of years or so…and gauge the level of “acceptance” that you find in those locales.
Please.
You are living in cloud cuckoo heaven if you think that these areas are in any way “sympathetic” to the needs of homosexual people. Is the HRC campaign also living in that cloud cuckoo heaven?
Coulda be…
If it is, it’s gonna get its cloud cuckoo heaven-residing ass kicked.
Sooner rather than later..
Watch.
AG
If the electorate has not become more homophobic since 2012, then Hillary is positioned just fine, since Obama gained re-election after coming out in favor of same-sex marriage during the 2012 campaign.
As to the rest of your post here: I am so sorry you have to live in NYC and become so…exposed to those Christopher St. types.
The pictures you paint: Arthur and Texans, hanging out at Dealey Square, hating on The Sodomites together. Better to bond on that issue with them than talk about music, and find out those same people think that you play THE DEVIL’S MUSIC.
Perhaps you would like to stop. We’re laughing at you now.
Overall approval ratings of Gay Marriage: 55%
Approvoal rating of Gay Marriage is accelerating
I would reference AG being a petulant child but I can’t figure out how to get his comments localized into a discernable address … so I’ll give him a pass this time.
You mean…you actually still believe in corporate-funded polls and the Washingtoon Post?
The Easter Bunny and Santa Claus are more believable. Bet on it.
Who’s “a child,” DerFarm?
Not me.
There were major polls in 2012 that said Romney was going to win right up to closing time. Why? Because they were selling their stuff to the Republicans. Who wants to hear the truth when it means defeat? Duh!!!
The Post? After their support of the various Butch era Iraq adventures and the lies that were used to sell them to the public? After the decades old disclosure of the Graham’s and Bradlee’s extensive ties w/the CIA? After the recent buyout by a man whose Amazon corporation has huge contracts with said CIA?
PLEASE!!!
Grow up.
AG
Let’s get real on some things, Arthur.
The reporting makes it clear that Mook will not take on a semi-public role like Plouffe did with Obama’s campaigns. The only “deliberate” move that Mook is making publicly is that he’s NOT going to have a public role. Note that in the very story you bring to our attention, Mook gives no quotes to the reporter, about his sexuality or anything else at all. Mook’s refusal to be in complete hiding to absolutely everyone about his sexuality is no longer the same as “branding himself as gay”. It’s mentioned once by one person in thousands of words in reporting. It is truly weird that this would be your takeaway from the story.
Are you “branding yourself as straight”, Arthur??
Your completely absurd inference is that Mook is going to walk into a Des Moines or Indianola public event or organizing meeting for the Iowa caucuses with “truly gay-branding attire” and act flamboyantly, or something. Where is your evidence for this? It’s not in the story you linked, I’ll tell you that.
I conclude by pointing out that the voter who refuses to vote for Hillary purely because her campaign manager has entirely private romantic relationships with members of the same sex is already firmly in the GOP camp and is turning out for the Republicans or not at all. They are not gettable by any Democratic Party candidate; that’s why they don’t matter from the standpoint of the swing voter Hillary needs to get.
“The reporting’ that you mention IS him taking a semi-public role.
Google News for “Mook gay Hillary” please. 8 full pages, and it’s only been a day.
He is already “:branded,” centerfielddj. it makes no difference how he acts or dresses. i suggested that experiment to you as a way to gauge the real acceptance rate of working class Americans. he already knows if he has had any sort of life outside of the inside-the-Beltway bubble.
And my point is that this is another selective weeding out of a certain part of the Democratic coalitions that elected Clinton I and Obama. is it on purpose? maybe. maybe he polls say that the Dems can lose a certain percentage of the working class…white and non-white…if that gets them the pro-gay vote. I can hear the debate now.
Wise up.
The whole campaign…on all sides…is a tissue of lies and half-truths. That’s politics. Deal wid it.
AG
It’s nice how you present your homophobia as “electoral analysis”. Google “Mook gay Hillary”…good lord.
Learning about your personal social views and policy priorities has been very helpful to us Frog Ponders. Provides context.
You have no idea about my “personal social views,” centerfielddj. Not a clue. I personally do not give good goddamn about what turns anyone on as long as it’s a willing partner of some reasonable level of maturity. I am however a realist in terms of what I see on the streets of the U.S. Take that as you must. I think that you and most of your so-called progressive compatriots are living in a dream world if you think that an appreciable majority of American voters approve of homosexual relations on any level. Further, i think…I really fear…that such ostrich-like, head-in-the-ground positions as those that you are taking will eventually unleash some hateful creature like Ted Cruz on our mortal asses. And then? Then there will truly be hell to pay. For us all.
WTFU.
AG
Hey, Boo, if you’re mind-numbingly etc. bored, maybe writing about politics — as distinct from policy — ain’t your thing. As a politics junkie of some 50 years, I thought this very diffent video announcement was fascinating.
Holy crap. Just watched the video.
I like Clinton. I think that given the range of the possible, she’s v. strong. But that is one horrible video. “I’m an ad. I’m telling you uplifting things. Look at the smiles! Do you feel better? I bet you do!”
Probably a smart first ad, especially if Americans are Googling ‘Is Hillary a Democrat?’ But fuck me sideways, that’s a whole lotta nothing.
bizarre. it went on and on -where is this going? was my reaction watching
Not sure there’s a word that describes it. Not that bizarre doesn’t come close, but it’s too old fashioned in tone and feel to evoke “bizarre” for me.
Unless I missed it, there was only one older person in it — talking about getting ready for retirement and change. Was almost ready for Clinton to come on and announce that she’s celebrating her golden years by running for the presidency. Of course she looked younger than the woman getting ready to retire, but that’s what high-priced camera work, make-up, and a few other things can buy.
the video wasn’t for us
Some of us are sophisticated enough to recognize an effective video/ad/logo when we’re not the intended target market for it. The video is too bland to be an epic fail. (It’s not the GWB sheep ad.)
Probably a smart first ad, especially if Americans are Googling ‘Is Hillary a Democrat?’
The three people that don’t know already know who she is probably don’t know how to use ‘the google.’
How this ad effectively introduces Hillary’s campaign much less sells her escapes me. Maybe her marketing pros know what works best with the twitter generation and a bunch of images with no content is all that’s needed.
Three people; http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-big-questions.html
We have it from the horse’s mouth, ‘Hillary Clinton will make an excellent president.’ So no need to fret, folks. The chalice has been passed…
Here’s the new Hillary logo.
Bold and creepy.
truly bizarre. male? plus bandera cubana as the commenter notes
I think the video and the logo contain all the weaknesses of her 2008 campaign. I assume she paid a lot for the video, which looks like a depends ad with the hard hitting forward momentum of demon sheep (where in the world is this going?). the logo looks like it was created by committee – haphazard and has connotations I don’t think they want
love the comment about the hospital sign. Also the blue, not the USA shade of blue on my monitor (whose colors are the logo?)
The logo is sort of in the style of recent corporate logos. Simplicity in the raw. But they’re not designed to communicate to the masses.
What I’m sensing is that Hillary’s campaign team is either in a bubble with impermeable boundaries or she’s had so many makeovers that authenticity has been irrevocably lost. Like trying to find the “Thriller” Michael Jackson in whatever he was doing at the end of his life.
Also note an increased role for one of her 2008 assets: Chelsea’s Invisible Hand.
The public doesn’t and can’t know or evaluate Chelsea’s job performance for the various positions she’s held. Except for one — the $600,000/year MSNBC sinecure.
I didn’t even know it had an “H” in it until someone pointed it out to me.
neither did I, I just saw the red arrow. ’til I saw the hospital sign comment
https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/587339812681592832/photo/1
While I think that I perceived the “H” with no difficulty, perhaps I was pre-primed to see it as I knew that I would be looking at the new Hillary logo.
But fascinating that you and seabe didn’t perceive the “H.” If that’s a common perception, the logo is a bigger fail than I suspected.
OY!!!
AG
I liked it. No big surprise there, I guess.
Everyone in this thread seems to agree that Dowd is horrible. And we seem to agree that the return of those classic, petty, navel-gazing Dowd-isms to our political discourse is revolting. Yet I think I am seeing shades of those very Dowd-isms in some of the comments.
Ironic?
Maybe you could specifically point out some of the ‘shades of those very Dowd-isms in some of the comments’?
Those on-board with a Hillary presidency prefer to use the rightwing style of labeling all those that dare to critique or criticize their favorite candidate as “haters.” We were “Bush haters” and/or anti-Americans a few years ago. Just as Zionists label those that criticize Israel as anti-Semites or if the critic is a Jew, then he/she is a “self-hating Jew.”
It was unfortunate that Democrats/liberals so often dismissed Obama critics as racists and that all critiques and criticisms of his administration were race based. A high percentage were, but those are obvious and are not the prevailing attitude of a majority of voters or the public at large. If it were, he wouldn’t have been twice elected as POTUS. Throwing all criticisms into the same pot deafened his supporters as to authentic criticisms. But it did shrink the anti-war Democratic faction down to something that can be drowned in a bathtub. (That’s more of a criticism of Obama’s diehard supporters than Obama himself. He does seem more able to handle criticisms than other recent presidents.)
Hillary supporters would have us accept that any and all criticisms of her are sexist and if one doesn’t view her as exceptional and the right woman to the be the first woman president, one is a “Hillary hater.”
Wonder if they can wrap their simple minds around the fact that other minds aren’t that simpleminded. For example, a few days ago the Sis (who does live in an upscale, red oasis) mentioned that many of her friends and neighbors believe Michelle Obama is a mean, spendthrift, bitch. I said that Michelle is a hard-working FLOTUS, only spends within whatever the standard FLOTUS budget is (no different from her predecessors), a good wife and mother, and all evidence indicates that she’s a genuinely nice and warm person.
Sis then added that Hillary isn’t seen as being a nice person. With no hesitation, I said that I’m sure that she too is genuinely nice person. As nice as Laura Bush and nicer than Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan. But Ronald Reagan was also a “nice person,” but that personality quality didn’t translate into “nice” public policies for the vast majority of Americans. “Nice” doesn’t even seem to me to be necessary to craft/support economically liberal public policies.
Mo would mo bettah if she’d swung over to what Jeb was doing on the day Hillary announced. Anyone else look at Jeb lately and wonder why he’s looking frail and wearing lipstick? After all she was the author of “Bushworld”.
Would be so much more interesting if the pundits analyzed how the chasers stacked up but oh no, gotta go the easy route and just recycle on Hillary. Just lazy.
he looks awfully pudgy too, not pleasingly plump but unhealthy. what’s that about?
Difficult days ahead for the sinking republic as the major parties prepare the citizens to bless a second Bush-Clinton match-up (and a fourth prez selected from two families!) Get out your histories of the War of the Roses, ha-ha. The piety that America has no aristocracy is now impossible to sustain.
The ocean of cashola bribery that is our “campaign system” cements the existing political and financial aristocracy into place even more solidly, of course. We’ll see how long the Repub clown car can contain all the conserva-clowns seeking plutocrat cash this time around. They each better find their sugar dadd(ies) ASAP, it might be a short ride. In this the Bush White Male III likely will have the inside track, it’s just a matter of cramming him down the unhappy Repub rubes throats (ala Rmoney) and letting the painstakingly manufactured hatred of Dems take it from there to a unified “conservative” gub’mint.
I surely hope that some slice of America is truly excited by HRC’s long expected announcement, perhaps the “greatest feminist campaign” as T Watson enthuses above. It will be an effort for many, as the dynastic aspect of American politics is really quite rancid and itself proof of our failing situation. Perhaps the best one can do is remember the situation of Weimar Germany and the monstrous movement it contained and tragically failed to suppress. It can certainly happen here, just wrap the rotting offal in the Flag and Cross….
As the earlier thread on the horrible felonious Coach Cheney demonstrated, the American Right, drunk with power, has truly gone off the rails. Having intentionally wrecked the nation’s institutions and perverted 45% of the citizenry, it will now stop at nothing to take total control of the nation’s political machinery. America’s army of Brownshirts and Talibaners are marching, they are at the doorstep and the complicit corporate media will certainly not be sounding any alarm–if indeed the befuddled and bamboozled populace could hear and understand it if it were sounded.
HRC seems to me a week reed with which to combat and ward off the looming calamity, but I guess that’s where we’re heading. Those of us who can muster the energy best do so.
Perhaps a weak reed, but about as weak as the liberal left has been these past few decades. Lack of organizing, balkanized in their interests, failure to build the liberal movement from the bottom up failure to develop a strong bench. Then people bitch that we get Hillary and that she’s running basically unopposed.
Meanwhile, I liked the rollout video, thought it properly emphasized the people-oriented theme which I hope her campaign truly becomes in substance. Of course, predictably it brought out some of the HillaryHaters here. Too commercial-like, not enough older people, even a seeming complaint that that elitist Hillary had actually spent some money on looking her best, unlike most normal people who just roll out of bed and go out in public without the fancy makeup job. Right.
I do agree on the disappointingly bland logo — looks like what the corporate execs at Msnbc and Cnbc would produce on a two-hour three-martini lunch break. Stodgy and uninspiring. But merely a logo, who cares. They can quietly go back and tweak it later if the masses start rebelling against it in the streets.
Lively discussion on Democracy Now! today re Hillary. Joe Conason and Michelle Goldberg unofficially repping the pro-Hillary side, sorta, vs feisty Rbt Sheer of Truthdig and that socialist city councilwoman from Seattle. Conason wins on points, imo. Some fireworks start at the 45′ mark.
Last week, for those who missed it, Barney Frank, endorsing Hillary, had a lively exchange with Sheer at Truthdig. Plenty of contentiousness in the last half of that interview. Two excellent liberal debaters going at it on domestic economic policy wrt Hillary and Bill.
Oh dear. From “Mr. Bus” in 2012 to Scooby in 2015. (Comedic gold if rightwingers could write comedy — which they can’t.)
I get it that Scooby-Doo has been a successful children’s cartoon series for decades. Hillary may even have watched it Saturday mornings when her daughter was young. (As it debuted in 1969 and the target market was 6-11 year old kids, it wasn’t childhood TV fare for many born before 1957.) But it’s a kiddie cartoon. There are more where this one came. Batmobile, etc. And the cool flying machines. Does the “X-Jet” get snapped up first?