Today it is possible for me to just go ahead and sum this up as “what Josh Marshall said.”
Looking back on more than a decade of blogging, I’ve really only had two significant errors of analysis. The first was specific, which was a very bad prediction about the results of the 2014 midterms. The second was more systemic, and it can basically be described as a failure to imagine that the Republicans are worse and can get worse than they presently seemed.
I eventually learned that you will be wrong if you give them any credit for good faith, expect any consistency, or believe that they will adhere to agreements or maintain long-established norms of behavior.
They just won’t.
I still believe that John McCain ripped a tear in the fabric of the universe and let some alien form of Stupid arrive here on our planet when he gave us Sarah Palin.
But I didn’t appreciate until later just how much of the groundwork had been laid for that by the behavior of the Bush administration and their complete disregard for “reality-based” thinking.
To put it in a formula, however bad you think the Conservative Movement is, they’re actually worse. And they’ll make that clear to you shortly.
Better take the threat of internment of Muslims seriously and get ahead of that wedge issue, which Democrat Wes Clark has made bipartisan. Sigh.
I think you are on the mark with that observation. That idea has widespread support in the underworld of far-right commentary, and it would not take much to push it from there into the mainstream of conservative policy. We are nearing that point of possibility. If we get a couple more incidents like the one in Chattanooga, the din will be such that the mainstream media will be forced to bring it into their reporting. From there, who knows where it will go.
Wes Clark hasn’t changed.
Billmon:
Remembering, but not fondly, all the deluded pricks in the “netroots.”
Like Matt Stoller?
Oops — should have said “some of the pricks.” There were so many and I am truly terrible at remembering blog names.
Markos really wanted to be one of them, but could only do so obliquely. Armando was one of the major ones and is still around. Although in fairness to him, he didn’t pile on as the gang troll rated me out of TU status.
I mean, Stoller arguably has a rabid hatred of Obama. IMO, he’s always gone beyond criticism; for him, it’s been personal. I don’t know what Obama did to him or when, but I’ve always disliked him over it.
So I just find it funny, as Stoller was the driving force behind the Recruit Wes Clark movement.
This (9/25/03)
Some more from Garance Franke-Ruta — Sept. 2003
A telling bit that Franke-Ruta picked up on:
Doubt I read either of those in 2003 or anytime after that. What I had observed beginning in late winter or early spring was sudden — and seemingly out of nowhere — pitches in blogland for Clark for POTUS as if this was the greatest idea ever. And if one didn’t buy that, it was just like Ike in 1952. Techies and wannabe Democratic operatives that would be a kingmaker. IMO at the time they were acting like fourteen year old wannabe groupies. (“Brogressive” or “bromance” were words not in existence back then.) And record marketing folks know how useful teenage girls screaming, crying, and mooning over a rock musician are for record sales.
Some of them figured out quickly after it went from DraftClark to ClarkCampaign that they had been duped. However, suspect that were too close too their own action and too enthalled with their first bromance to see by whom and why. If Stoller has been consistently hostile towards Obama, it suggests to me that he wasn’t going to be duped again and didn’t care that there was possibly no common ground among the powerful interests that had pushed Clark and Obama.
Today, I’m observing a faction of what I disparagingly called Clarkies having moved to right where they were supposed to have been in 2007. And would have been had they outgrown their sexism a bit faster.
Doubt it was that reason. Stoller wrote in 2008 that Clark should be VP.
That’s the problem with falling in love with a politician, celebrity, etc. and putting the object of one’s love on a pedestal. Time and facts don’t matter.
Political bromance is a weird phenomenon. (We here at the Pond can see an example of it in operation on most days. And it does drive some of us nuts.)
Stoller had a good review of Geithner’s book. Perceptive, well informed, and articulate. Odd that he could be so blind wrt Clark.
Shorter version: The DraftClark foot soldiers were “Libertarian Democrats.” Not libertarian in the ACLU mode but libertarian in the CPAC mold.
Booman writes:
Yes they will. Bet on it.
Also:
A great sentence.
But…her stupidity is not “alien.” It’s just mainstream human stupidity cloaked in a particularly post-Reaganish American form.
So it goes in the American here and now.
They are everywhere, and they love them their Trump.
Bet on that as well.
Reagan redux, only much smarter and much more dangerous.
Watch.
AG
What’s becoming clear is that Jeb is not up to the task of culling the field of crazies. How much damage Trump does to him and the rest of the field is really the only question left. Of course that will open the door for Trump to go Independent. Jeb’s fallen in polls and allowed himself to be sidelined. Even Romney fought back.
Greed and the need for power arise from a harmed ego. We live in a system that ensures that there will be another generation of wounded egos seeking to salve their pain through acquisition and control. Children in poverty. Children of PTSD victims. I don’t know if this necessarily is the fate of humanity, but we certainly can do better than we’ve done.
Do Republicans recognize these silent tides in us? I think on some level they do, because they continue to create situations whose ultimate harvests are more grief and terror for the next generation.
Right now people are suffering and dying in Ukraine because of decisions that were made for the acquisition of power and wealth. Likewise, in Greece. In Syria and Iraq. In Afghanistan. America doesn’t corner the market on exploitation, but at this moment in history it’s the top gun.
The Republican Party is like the sociopath in our family. Always figuring out ways to manipulate, betray, control people so that they can salve their wounded hearts with jet skis, trips to Vegas and, most of all, making more money.
Let’s not kid ourselves, the next internment/concentration camps will not have blue skies and grass on the ground. They will be PRISONS, cold concrete walls & iron bars.
Bad enough the GOP and the prison industrial complex are champing at the bit, a Democratic military general brought it into open parlance. Voters like us must demand the campaigns of Democratic leaders renounce Wesley Clark. Not now. Not ever Again.
These people have been marinating their brains in Rush Limbaugh’s colon for 20 years.
Many of us had our analytical records tarnished by the 2014 election. (And I’m still not exactly sure why I misread so many of those Senate races.)
The distance between the Democratic Party median and the conservative wing of the GOP seems to have been relatively stable over the past forty odd years. And before that from what older people who were there told me of the commie witchhunt period. While fictional, the characters in “Dr. Strangelove” weren’t cut from whole cloth. People that crazy did inhabit various powerful institutional and government positions.
Everybody engages in some magical thinking and for some it’s a way of life. Been that way for a long time.
You underestimated Democratic establishment incompetence.
The NC Dems’ “we are watching you” letter couldn’t have been that unique. Not to mention that without OFA there didn’t seem to be anyone actually working the field as opposed to wasting money on media.
But then the Democratic establishment is afraid of winning back the South.
You underestimated Democratic establishment incompetence.
If that were the explanation then I would have flubbed 2002, 2004, and 2010. But wouldn’t reject the possibility that I overrated the competence of Democratic incumbents. Yet, in 2004 I had no difficulty seeing that incumbent Daschle was going down and the GOP would take most of the open seats.
What seems to stand out for me is that it was a break-out year for the crazies. They’d been threatening in the prior two elections but mostly came up short.
Democrats still don’t seem to get what type of Democratic candidates win. As much as I wish it weren’t so, it’s more about style than substance and ideology. Jim Webb could knock out an incumbent, incumbents Mark Udall and Kay Hagan lost.
They’re afraid of winning back power because their constituents would expect actual left leaning chanfes. Neoliberal money can’t have rhat, can they?
You and Josh TPM might be wrong specifically here though. A survey in the field found Trump dropped from 21 to 13 points on Sunday, the day after his remarks.
Rush defending Trump proves your point Boo. I think Trump is going to continue take every opportunity to tear down the GOP establishment, to the overwhelming applause of the hicks and goobers that Rush and Co have tenderly nurtured with a diet of bigoted idiocy. Trump is a grifter of the first order, with more media savvy than most, and consequently dangerous as a cobra. He’s not a joke, he’s a heart attack. If he doesn’t somehow derail himself, I suspect he will be eliminated from the GOP colon in some other manner; he’s too uncontrollable to be let anywhere near the levers of power. (Or maybe that’s just his grift? I can’t tell.)
Just remember, however bad you think the Conservative movement is, they’re actually no worse than the Democrats…