Over at The New Republic, Rebecca Martin has a piece suggesting that Hillary Clinton isn’t doing enough to appeal to Millennials who don’t go to college. And that may be true. It’s not going to be easy to drag young Millennials to the polls, and the more economically pressed they are, the less time they have to think or care about politics.
On the other hand, Martin’s advice that Clinton not try to by hip or cool in the Obama style seems somewhat nonsensical and a little uncharitable. I mean, it wasn’t my cup of tea but I do remember the whole Texts from Hillary meme.
She didn’t seem to reflect a “distinctly uncool…stodgy political persona” to me. Maybe it was a little strained but it was funny and it kind of fit. I don’t see why she should attempt to make a virtue out of being boring nor why she should avoid the kind of slick marketing that could humanize her for young people. Of course, it has to work. It can’t be ridiculous.
Anyway, Martin really only suggests one policy prescription that Clinton could use to talk to non-college student Millennials, and it’s not very impressive:
So far, though, Clinton has failed to put together that message. To pry young, working-class voters away from Trump, she’ll need to champion a host of unglamorous, brass-tacks economic issues. Take one example that antiregulatory conservatives have embraced: streamlining the process of securing licenses for professions like hairdresser, electrician, or building contractor. “It shouldn’t take me longer to become a florist than to become an EMT,” says Patrice Lee of Generation Opportunity, the conservative youth outreach network underwritten by the Koch brothers. “It locks a lot of young people out of opportunity.”
Is there a federal hairdressing license? Does the Department of Energy have to approve every new electrician in the country?
There might be a way to make it easier and quicker to apply for Small Business loans or something, but I think Martin needs to go back to the drawing board.
And, as she noted elsewhere in her article, it’s not as if these voters need to be pried away from Trump.
By rights, working-class youth should be Clinton’s for the taking: Fifty-two percent lean Democratic; 34 percent tilt Republican. And because so many are politically disengaged, their leanings are considered “soft,” in campaign parlance: They could be swayed by any candidate with a message that resonates.
They don’t so much need to be stolen from Trump as they need to be motivated to bother voting at all. However hip Obama supposedly is, only 29 percent of working class young voters turned out in 2012. They’re not going to do any better this time around unless something changes, that is true.
But, honestly, getting a Text from Hillary would probably go further than pandering to them about streamlining state-issued trade licenses.
A laser-like focus on dope, drones, and domestic surveillance and she’d be up by 30 points.
When answering questions from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Clinton said that she would move marijuana to Schedule II, and would “allow states that have enacted marijuana laws to act as laboratories of democracy.” She would pick up most of these young voters by simply texting this view every single day. It’s not that pot is all the young ones care about, but it does go a long way toward undermining that uncool, stodgy view of her.
I’m not a huge Clinton fan, but the idea that she’s stodgy or unlikeable baffles me.
And this is laughable: “To pry young, working-class voters away from Trump, she’ll need to champion a host of unglamorous, brass-tacks economic issues.”
What kind of shitwit thinks that voters attracted to Trump will respond to unglamorous brass-tacks issues? “To pray my buddy away from his porn addiction, I’ll need to champion TED Talks.”
The idea that she’s not stodgy or unlikable baffles me.
Agreed with the rest though.
I don’t see Clinton as any more stodgy and unlikeable as any other politician.
The rightwing media made a big to-do about how W would be fun to drink a beer with. That was a totally made up concept that took legs bc the rightwing media can pull that trick and get the dittoheads in line.
Clinton doesn’t have a similar media empire pushing propaganda in her favor (if anything, it’s just the opposite). Ergo, she’s not going get some sort of favorable propaganda to make her seem more “likeable” to the younger generation.
If working class millenials are voting for Trump, it’s highly unlikely that Clinton can do anything different from what she’s already doing to change their minds. Attempting to be “cool” will almost certainly rebound on her. She’s not W, and she won’t get the same fawning treatment. She’d be resoundingly mocked and derided. Not worth the attempt.
You’d think “abuela” would have taught them a lesson, but it appears not.
this small, but important correction/clarification imo: it wasn’t just the “rightwing” media making “a big to-do about how W would be fun to drink a beer with.”
The Useless (Or Worse) Corporate Media were all in on that stupid shit.
With immensely consequential results (just ask the million [+/- a few hundred thousand] prematurely dead Iraqi victims of dubya’s War Crime — oh, right, never mind, no point in asking them anything anymore).
In an election as close as 2000’s, dozens of individual factors could be pointed to that would each have tipped the election out of stealing reach if it had broken the other way.
It has long been my conclusion that the journalistic malpractice whereby the Beltway Village adopted a strong, irrational animus against Gore — while simultaneously falling gullibly for dubya’s stupid shtick, forming a crush on him, and coloring all their “reporting”, “analysis”, and opinion accordingly — was the most crucial of those potential decisive factors.
The world’s been suffering from the results and hangover ever since.
Yet the perps mostly remain obliviously unrepentant and unreformed, engaging in the same malpractice on a regular, ongoing basis.
Good thing we’re electing one of the prominent liberal supporters of that war, huh? I mean, it’s not like she was silent when her husband/Gore was inflicting starvation to the tunes of hundreds of thousands of deaths in that region earlier. And she totes learned her lesson afterwards, which is why Libya and Haiti and Honduras are such nice places to be.
Here’s some cold, hard truth that you liberals really need to deal with: unless you’re claiming that Gore would’ve used his magic foresight powers to prevent 9/11 (and I’ve no shit heard Democrats say that) we would’ve had a major ground invasion of Iraq even if Gore was in office.
Gore and Clinton already proved their massive indifference to human suffering in the face of of American nationalism less than 3 years earlier. The only thing that would’ve stayed their hand was that an invasion would be politically murderous, a concern that was definitely not articulated by people like Kerry and Gore themselves at the time. They said shit like ‘it should’ve been more international’ or even ‘from a cold game theory perspective, we won’t get a lot out of it’ not ‘it will kill a fuckload of people’.
What stayed WJC war-making hand, and it would have been the same for Gore, was the Pentagon. They possibly would have balked at the Bush/Cheney grand adventure if they’d known that they had no exit plan. They were thinking those two would be like Reagan and Bush; blow up a bunch of shit and then get the hell out of there.
I actually don’t think that it’s so implausible that 9/11 (as we know it) wouldn’t have happened with Gore in the WH. At a minimum, he wouldn’t have been in a FL classroom reading “The Pet Goat” and not too likely that Holy Joe would have been running air war games that day. The intel probably wouldn’t have been any better, but field people, such as Rowley, may not have been so quickly dismissed. And he wouldn’t have been camping out in TX for a month while even people like Tenet were raising alarms.
What’s the evidence for the Pentagon having the kind of political power to stop proven warhawks for starting their own Wag The Dog war?
W. Bush certainly shoulders a bunch of the blame for the war, since it’s pretty clear that even absent of the factors that would’ve pushed any post-Hoover President to invasions they were still itching for a fight. But I frankly don’t see any President, especially not Gore with his own record of supporting warhawkery, being able to resist the enormous short-term political pressures and incentives for war.
The Great Man theory of history is bullshit.
What difference would that have made?
This seems a lot like the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy to me. What’s the evidence that Rowley or Tenet had some kind of insight that would’ve made their warnings actionable over dozens of other terrorist alerts/threats? Gore and Clinton had their share of horrible terrorist incidents that they were (understandably) not able to nip in the bud despite warnings.
Your claims of presidential war-powers sounds as naive as those that are under the impression that a POTUS gets “the button” to use as he/she sees fit.
While technically a president as CIC can order bombing runs all on his/her own and the military is supposed to do as ordered, if there’s no buy-in at the senor command level, it’s either not going to happen or will be slow walked. There was no love for WJC in the Pentagon, but they were fine with bombing Iraq to enforce the no-fly zone. Recall that it was NATO that bombed Serbia and not the US; WJC participated in that decision but had he been alone, would that have happened?
I made no comment as to the war-making proclivities of WJC or Gore. If I had I would have said they weren’t low. Had WJC’s been low, he wouldn’t have needed either the Pentagon or Congress to stay his hand. The Joint Chiefs don’t have operational command, but that doesn’t mean they are voiceless and without power. However, any president can expect that a bombing order, “wag the dog” or not, will be followed unless its obviously an illegal order or obviously far too extreme and dangerous. We put a lot of faith in the command level of the army, navy, air force, and marine corps not being totally populated with raving lunatics. Not a great situation, but Congress long ago abdicated its responsibility to declare war.
Back to 9/11, had it taken place exactly the same way under Gore, attacking Afghanistan would have happened. Doubtful that it would have been any more competent, but would military resources have been pulled from that theater to a whoop-ass war with Iraq? Would he have had a team that could have constructed the great WMD lie? Would KSA not have put up a fuss as they did for GWB? It’s not as if they were wild about the idea of overthrowing Saddam in favor of a Shia Iraq government which should have been the expected outcome. At least Gore is enough of a policy wonk that he would have understood that.
Gore wouldn’t have been using it willy-nilly. He would’ve been under immense pressure from the GOP, centrist Democrats, the mainstream media, and the voting public. Especially after Afghanistan would’ve ended up the big fat failure it inevitably was.
The idea that with everyone except the liberal-left clamoring for an exciting Gulf War-style war after Afghanistan went south that the fucking military industrial complex would be a check on an invasion is way more naive than my original assertion. Much more.
Why wouldn’t it have? I find the Obama/Gore assertion that Afghanistan wasn’t a blood and treasure pit that could’ve been ‘won’ (somehow) with the proper amount of sacrifice, steeliness, and foresight completely delusional and ridiculous. Iraq wasn’t a distraction from Afghanistan; Iraq would’ve been an inevitable consequence of Afghanistan if that particular war had been prosecuted the way whiny dumbasses like Obama and Gore said it should have.
No — the public was not clamoring for a war with Iraq. Go back and look at the polling immediately after Bush/Cheney presented their “case for war” (which they had been prepping for at least six months, including feeding the MSM and getting Bliar on-board) in September 2002. Yes, Congressional Republicans and war-hawk Democrats were on board, but not the public. The only question that received majority support for it was if the UN authorized the war. Which it never did — in spite of Colin Powell’s lies before that body. Who would Gore have enlisted for such a task? Other than Powell there wasn’t anyone else in the country that had his stature and was as trusted. (Not that he should have been.) Powell was the one person that all on his own could have stopped that war from happening, but he’s always been a sycophant.
I’ve never asserted that the war in Afghanistan would have been prosecuted more successfully under a president Gore. (I did oppose it, but didn’t have to think more deeply other than to recognize that GWB would make a mess there.) And Obama tried and failed as miserably as GWB had. I’m only disputing that there would have been a second Iraq war under Gore. There were no Iraqis on those 9/11 planes.
From http://www.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-americans-support-war-against-iraq.aspx:
But there was still a venal and stupid MSM, GOP, Blue Dog caucus, Democratic donor class, and voting public that the President needed to answer to. And their grip on Gore’s balls would’ve tightened after the Afghanistan War inevitably failed to produce any results.
Could any President have resisted the war hysteria at that point? Maybe. But Gore (or either Clinton for that matter) definitely would not have been that President.
I really don’t see a post 9/11 Gore admonistration focusing on Iraq and trying to build the case for invasion the way the Bushies did. You may believe that there is a PermaGov and Gore would just be another puppet thereof, but I don’t see Gore as the type of leader who would shrug off the concerns of NATO allies and UN concerns as easily as the Bushies did to start their invasion. “Old Europe” telling him no would have bogged him down and I don’t see his administration going around that kind of block. I don’t think of Gore as the kind of leader who would talk about mushroom clouds and then ignore the UN inspectors who found no evidence thereof. If a Gore administration tried to make and invasion of Iraq seem necessary and central to the GWOT, at the very least there’s no invasion in 2003, because he’d still be waiting for the UN to agree.
Posting here what I did downthread:
International opprobrium and lack of any smoking guns connecting Iraq to 9/11 wasn’t going to stop “Mr. Hundreds of Thousands of People Died Due to My Boss’s Blockade”, let me tell you. Operation Iraqi Freedom was a bigger undertaking than Operation Desert Fox, but the pressures for the former didn’t exist for the latter. ‘Yes, Clinton and every other Democrat since FDR has a history of ignoring international consensus when it comes to military intervention when the USA really wanted a war, but Gore would’ve been different’ is not an argument I find very convincing.
Nice cherry picking there (and your link doesn’t even work). For whatever reason, Gallup consistently found strong support for a war with Iraq. (Note: I’m only speaking of that period before “shock and awe” began. After that Americans have a standard kneejerk response that it’s patriotic to support active wars.)
LA Times 12/17/92
I erred in saying that Bush/Cheney had been prepping six months for that war. January 2002 — SOTU — Axis of Evil. That was the beginning of the public priming the pump for the war.
Did you miss Al Gore’s September 23, 2002 speech. One of the few and comparatively early in the lead-up to the war, he opposed it.
Here’s Pew: http://www.people-press.org/2003/01/30/public-struggles-with-possible-war-in-iraq/
Now, support for the war did consistently drop when you added in a bunch of caveats. Caveats that consistently warhawkish administrations (Reagan/Bush/Clinton) have been shown to ignore. Support for the Gulf War dropped hugely when a lot of caveats were added, too, but that didn’t affect the wave of pressure coming from political actors.
Gore opposed the Iraq War because of the lack of international consensus. He accepted the ends and the casus belli, not the means. Meaning, that pre-emptive war is okay as long as people have international consensus, which makes as much sense as saying that murder is okay as long as you make a really good stew out of the remains and donate the victim’s possessions to charity.
Really? Are you kidding me?
What I find frankly laughable here is people who know nothing about these people on a personal, observational basis (as you clearly don’t), yet just know what they would have done. I mean, this is so rich I have to put the spoon down.
First, had Gore been president, there would have been no Iraq invasion. In fact, given Gore’s attention to bin Laden and al-Qaeda, things would have proceeded apace in the right direction. Would Afghanistan been attacked had there been an attack? Sure. They deserved it, ya tit. You don’t harbor an apocalyptic loon like bin Laden and not understand there are risks. Second, the Taliban had it coming for any number of reasons for years. I suspect you envision a world without war. I suspect such a world would not speak English.
Second, had Gore been president, there is an extremely strong likelihood that 9/11 wouldn’t have happened to begin with. There were any number of clues that al-Qaeda was planning to do just what they did. Problem is, Gore (and Clinton) was finely attuned to this. Wanna know why Bush looked so clueless? He realized he should have paid attention to what he had been told back in August. He looked like a kid who heard his mother say, “I thought I told you to put out the fire before you went out with Suzie!” If you realize anything about Gore it’s that he would’ve rewritten the rules of procedure for airports before this could happen. It wouldn’t have been Tenet’s and Clarke’s hair that would have been burning all those months. You are familiar with at least the basic facts, aren’t you?
In your zeal to blame the “military-industrial complex” (this is the best proletarian you can come up with?), along with your non-reality-based assertion that somehow the Iraq War would still have been inevitable is about on par with the rantings of a high school senior whose parents belonged to the local Communist Party. Now you’re in Fairyland.
If you knew the personalities involved, free from your puerile rhetoric, you wouldn’t write such drivel. And you clearly have zero insight into who Gore and who Clinton and who Hillary are.
Hint: People don’t act out manifestos. They act out who they are.
Christ. Throw a match on those strawmen you’ve made and run for cover. Reality gonna gitcha!
Liberal fanfiction about Gore and the Clintons is my favorite genre of fanfiction. In a world of inane counterfactuals, they’re Great People of History whose failures were ONLY caused by jealous right-wing troglodytes and/or inevitable tides of fate. And certainly not harried and unimaginative products of their time, scarcely morally and intellectually better than the clowns that preceded them.
I’ll ask you what I asked Marie3: What’s the evidence that Rowley or Tenet had some kind of insight that would’ve made their warnings actionable over dozens of other terrorist alerts/threats that the White House would’ve gotten? Gore and Clinton had their share of horrible terrorist incidents that they were (understandably) not able to nip in the bud despite warnings. What made 9/11 warnings actionable in a way that those did not?
It’s impressive that you’ve managed to drag these folks into discussing pointless hypotheticals from a non-existent Gore presidency. Would Gore have ordered torture in this reality as well?
Now you’ve got me down this rabbit hole.
His boss practically invented the practice of extraordinary rendition after synthesizing it from George H. W. Bush, so I’m going to say… yes.
if you think your insults add eloquence to your comment, you are wrong.
how old were you when this shit was going down.
Because you display little evidence of having been sentient in realtime.
For one very obvious example, you seem completely oblivious to this, Gore’s September 23, 2002 speech condemning Cheney/dubya’s rush-to-War-Crime in Iraq. At least, I didn’t notice it in any of your lists, in spite of it being THE crucial piece of evidence re: what Gore would have done as President.
Anticipating your misguided objections about some things Gore said in there (e.g., credulity re: Saddam’s “access” to WMD and Poodle Blair’s stature as a “leader”; endorsement of U.S. policy of ending Saddam’s rule by SOME means [but clearly NOT by dubya’s War Crime]; etc.), I emphasized the date because the timing of that speeech is critical: i.e., while Bushies were “marketing” the War Crime, but before their case for it had fallen completely apart, yet they proceeded to commit it anyway.
So you ignore the single most salient piece of evidence that Gore would NOT have invaded Iraq as dubya did, (i.e.: after inspectors found no evidence Iraq had WMD; absent UNSC resolution; in defiance of European allies’ opposition; only with credible, robust coalition if he did so, not just the silly “coalition of the billing” + Poodle Blair; etc.).
Also too, your extremely offputting “style” of simply declaring your factually unsupported opinions to be facts is strong incentive to just not bother with you. I made an exception in this case. Don’t expect that to become a pattern.
I’ll tell you what I told Marie3: In that speech, Gore opposed the Iraq War because of the lack of international consensus. He accepted the ends and the casus belli, not the means. Gore did not oppose a pre-emptive war against Iraq because of the collateral damage or that regime change is evil. ‘Saddam does not present a preemptive threat’ would be sufficient from most people, but we’re talking about a VP who cheered on Operation Desert Fox and blockades that killed a lot of people. That’s just crocodile tears.
Oh, no, oaguabonita isn’t going to talk to me anymore. How awful that someone who opened their post with a personal insult decided that my combative and hateful tone was just too much for them to bear. I’m really going to miss conversing with someone with consistent ethical standards.
with = “just too much for them to bear” validates my point very nicely. Thx.
I actually do think Gore would more likely than not have prevented the September 11 attacks. Terrorism was a higher priority to the Clinton admin than Bush, they would not have taken their eyes off the ball. Clinton/Gore top people were flat out more competent than Ws mayberry machiavellis. They would not have ignored the ‘Bin Laden determined to attack us briefings,’ Combine this with the frankly lucky breaks the hijackers got and if we re run it I would be unsurprised if it failed or failed more than in our timeline.
The comparison is to Obama who is at least as smart and clearly more charismatic.
“James Mackey, a 30-year-old community organizer in Boston, knows firsthand how tough it can be to mobilize his peers. “If you’re trying to make ends meet every day,” he says, “working nine to five with a job that’s only paying you $8 an hour, and your rent is $1,200, and electricity and utilities are adding up, and your kids are in school, you’re not thinking about, `Who am I gonna vote for?’ ” (from your link)
This is not helping, either…“Things Are Worse” – Dollar Stores’ Startling Admission: Half Of US Consumers Are In Dire Straits
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-25/things-are-worse-dollar-stores-startling-admission-half-us-
consumers-are-dire-strait
But the biggest factor by far impacting the performance of both dollar stores was the sharp, adverse turn in the purchasing power of the lower half of US consumers.
Both Dollar General and Dollar Tree said pressures on their core lower-income shoppers contributed to the same-store sales misses that both retailers reported. On today’s conference call, Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos said that he was surprised to admit that while on the surface things are supposed to be getting better, the reality is vastly different for low-income US consumers:
“I know that when we look at globally the overall U.S. population, it seems like things are getting better. But when you really start breaking it down and you look at that core consumer that we serve on the lower economic scale that’s out there, that demographic, things have not gotten any better for her, and arguably, they’re worse. And they’re worse, because rents are accelerating, healthcare is accelerating on her at a very, very rapid clip.”
yes,
$1200 a month rent on $8 an hour? Must have two jobs.
Quotes were from two different sources. Two different locations, probably. There are BIG regional differences.
Mino….
Not a zerohedge quote…
The Mackey quote was from Booman’s link…https://newrepublic.com/article/135729/forgotten-millennials
The Dollar Store quote was from a Zero Hedge discussion of the original post….http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dollar-stores-results-idUSKCN110167
What difference does it make?
They don’t vote. Trump isn’t offering them anything. So, nothing is required of HRC.
I am strongly against this streamlining. I want to be sure I hire an electrician or building contractor that knows state building codes. I want a barber that has a license so I know he wont fuck up cutting my 11+-cowlick head of hair too badly. No. No. No.
Well, Texts from Hillary wasn’t something Hillary did. It was a meme used by other people. They would sound arrogant actually coming from her. She could do something like that, but it would be difficult to do it for long without tweeting something that could be given a negative spin and you know the media would do that HARD.
The Reno speech was originally supposed to be about cutting red tape for small business, which would address these issues. I’m not sure how much milage she could get talking about it though. These are complex policy issues and workers so pressed for time they can’t even vote aren’t going to be dissecting complex licensing policies, or even reading wonky analyses of how they work. If she gets elected with a Democratic House, she could actually get some proposal through and that could be a big help down the line, but I don’t see it helping with getting that Democratic Congress in the first place.
The Reno speech was originally supposed to be about cutting red tape for small business, which would address these issues.
This is always such a canard. What red tape is holding back small businesses? None!! It’s because people have no damn money and because big companies make it hard for small companies to compete!!
No, there really is a lot of licensing and regulatory hoops. Some is necessary, but it could be less, and more importantly could be streamlined.
The real killer is zoning, though.
The rate of small new business failures has always been high, but in the past, people in local communities could see opportunities when they came into existence through either population outgrowing the existing businesses or changes in fashion. Now, corporations/chains scour every community and fill those openings for restaurants, hardware stores, pharmacies, and medical services. If one of their new locations doesn’t make it, they can close it without much impact on their capital base. For individuals, they begin from a position of being under-capitalized and therefore, are dependent on succeeding quickly because they don’t have staying power.
The pot-shops in a few states won’t be around for long because big dollars will scoop up many and those they can’t buy, they’ll simply compete against.
The heavy weight of chain-store competition is a very serious issue for small business, but it’s not the only one. Regulatory burdens favor larger companies too, as they’ve had to deal with it many times before so they’re out along the learning curve.
It’s all well and good to cite “regulatory burdens” as the GOP and faux-libertarians repeat as a mantra, but absent concrete and specific laws/regulations that are barriers for small businesses, it’s just blather.
I say this as someone that has always looked to patronize local, and preferably independent, businesses as much as possible. Professionally, it was also far more rewarding for me to work with small or smaller businesses than publicly traded companies. However, over the past few decades, that sector has gotten smaller and smaller and my employers couldn’t justify the revenues generated from such small businesses.
This is what I’ve always read — that the Real Existing Red TapeTM people can justifiably be angry with is typically a local-level issue. When we’re talking about federal regulations, we’re generally talking about big obvious stuff, like “Don’t dump toxic shit in waterways” and “Don’t needlessly put your workers in danger”.
I was in college 20 years ago and remember my priorities were partying, working, and going to school. Yes, I did vote sometimes. But there’s a blur of time in there where politics meant arguing over things with people while stoned that I didn’t have a whole lot of deep knowledge about. You know, things “should” work that way, work this way, nationalizing healthcare overnight would give everybody jobs immediately and workout great so why don’t “they” do it now–the corporations!
Getting young people to vote has been a conversation piece forever. Its nothing new this season.
Such a freaking no-brainer. Just call for legalization, Hillary.
Brilliant!
I don’t find Hillary stodgy or unlikable, but the notion of Hillary being hip strikes me as kind of absurd.
I’m reminded of a tweet Mark Hammer wrote after “Hillary” tweeted “Delete your account” at Trump and Trump went ballistic on Twitter:
I mean, she still uses email in 2016, and we have all the emails and memos and shit about her being incapable of using technology.
“Hip” isn’t her thing. Her thing is, “I suck at speechifying, and I can’t figure out an iPhone. But I’m a grown-up, and I have good policy proposals that’ll make your lives better, and I can talk through white papers that demonstrate why that is. My opponent, on the other hand, is a mindless, racist, bigoted lunatic. Vote for me.”
“I’ll make things a bit better. My opponent will start WWIII because Uzbekistan’s head of state made fun of the size of his hands on Facebook.”
Which is, y’know, a good pitch, if you value things getting a bit better and not dying in a nuclear holocaust.
…adding:
And Obama’s not that hip either. He’s just seen as cool because he has a gloriously dry sense of humor, which is highly-valued by the Internet, and everybody associates Internet culture — somewhat rightly — with youth.
His playlists have some obscure stuff, so he’s got mild cred as far as hip goes, but you know how that happens: His kids or Favreau or Pfeiffer text him some YouTube video, and he decides he likes it.
Clinton’s problem is she is transparently patronizing.
See her statements on XL and tpp. The obfuscations on the email structure.
All to clever by a half.
Obama does NOT have the same trust issue with the young she does.
She earned it.
Don’t agree with this at all. “Patronizing” in this case seems to be largely a function of one’s opinion on her going into the question.
She’s fucked either way. No matter what she says, nobody will think she’s being honest. It’s quite understandable, if foolish, that she winds up with issues like the emails. “They’ll demonize me anyway, so fuck it.” I might well have the same attitude in her context.
Oh please.
She could win by not lying after the Comey interview. By not claiming, as she did, that the State Department gave her the go ahead to use the email server.
They are straight up in your face lies.
Essentially your argument is that I might as well like because they think that I am any way.
Which is about as twisted an argument as I have ever heard.
And they are fucking dumb – because they give rise to a perception of dishonesty.
Which she has earned.
She wins by not telling them.
I could go on to cite her asinine statement on TPP (her initial answer was I will give you after she is elected) but these excuses are absurd.
Barack Obama, approval rating in the Q poll, 18-34
Approve 70, Disapprove 28
Like/Dislike of Clinton, 18-34
44 like (22 like a lot)
47 dislike (37 a lot)
Is Clinton honest, 18-34
27 yes
71 no
In a two way race it is 64-29.
Her problems will not be on election day, they will be in office, where a key Democratic Constituency has significant doubts about her in a way they never had about Obama.
https://www.qu.edu/images/polling/us/us08252016_U88mxwn.pdf
the more I think about it, the more it seems to me election day isn’t going to solve anything.
I mean, election day will get Trump out of the way, but Trump has just stood in the way of a real vetting of the candidate; all the questions that have been blocked by “Trump is scary” will emerge
It really won’t.
I’d advise you to look at her approval ratings when in office vs when she’s running for office.
A lot of the issue with her honesty in polling seems, to me, to be a function of her inherent hesitancy with taking strong positions and decades of right-wing horseshit. Some of it is also of her making (the Clintons, whether looking for it or not, do attract drama in a way Obama never has), which, paired with right-wing horseshit, leads to Clinton fatigue. There’s probably something of an association of the Clintons with Baby Boomer pissing matches, too, and that turns off the young.
Then she gets into office and most think she does a fine job.
My take on her is the opposite. I don’t find her terribly dishonest or corrupt, but I don’t think she’s very good in office. Particularly, of course, on foreign policy. (On domestic policy, I’m more liberal, but I’m generally fine with her and largely think the “Clinton is a corporate stooge” stuff is nonsense.)
Obama has faced the same right wing shit as she has.
He doesn’t have her problem.
Because she tells lies.
And for stupid reasons too.
Obama’s gotten plenty of shit from the left. Just read this blog, for example. People claim President Obama has been duplicitous all the time, both on the right and the left.
He doesn’t have the problem to the degree Hillary does, and I agree that Clinton has brought some of her problems upon herself. But she has not brought most of the problems upon herself, as the recent AP coverage of the latest email story has demonstrated:
https://thinkprogress.org/ap-executive-editor-admits-tweet-on-clinton-foundation-was-sloppy-and-wron
g-still-won-t-delete-913d23f49297
In the decades-long battle between the media and the Clintons, the media has distorted the facts more frequently than the Clintons.
Nope. You tell lies you earn mistrust.
And she lies.
The right wing did not invent her saying she had pre-clearance to use a private e-mail server.
It was a bald face lie. If she had made the same statement to the FBI it would have been grounds for obstruction of justice.
Hillary has earned mistrust. She has not earned the press’ constant distortions of fact.
I see. We’re doing the BernieBro thing now.
I notice that a lot of the apologies seem to completely ignore her spate of media disasters. They’re small-scale and won’t affect the arc of the election, but they’re pretty damn revealing.
http://www.carlbeijer.com/2015/11/hillary-clinton-is-last-gasp-of-boomers.html
This is in addition to other media gaffes, like the abuela kerfluffle and the lame-ass ‘delete your account’ and her surrogates embarrassing themselves with ‘we are the left’.
HRC has Chelsea to keep her in touch with the youth culture.
Expect a 2017 version of this:
Wow, that hurts. To equate Hillary with Nixon is damning praise indeed. Hopefully, if elected, she won’t suffer his fate, although given the rats on the right side of our political divide, that’s highly probable. If they can’t come up with something new they can always travel the Benghazi route once more, but with real feeling this time around.
Actually, upon thoughtful consideration, perhaps being a stodgy Midwesterner might be just the ticket to a successful Hillary Presidency, as well as a bulwark against impeachment, Benghazi notwithstanding. Anyways, that’s what I’m hoping for.
She already has Nixon’s bloodthirstiness, cliquishness, secretiveness, naked social hierarchy climbing ambitions (Nixon’s ressentiment towards the Rockefeller wing and Clinton’s money-grubbing careerism has some parallels), and a broad base of supporters who are willing to excuse any faults with ‘the opposition is so bad that we have no choice but to close our eyes and support our candidate’.
She hardly needs a cadre of RWNJs nipping at her heels to push her in that direction. Well, she’ll need them to deflect blame away when her next ill-advised war goes south, but you know what I mean.
Wow, the she-devil incarnate, right? I am almost gobsmacked by the extremity of the views here about HRC and what her Presidency might be like. I also happen to believe that many of the takes here are way off-base. However, the truth will be revealed in good time, assuming that the American voter votes for the right candidate in November. I gather that you and others who comment here will NOT be voting or voting for someone other than the Democratic nominee?
I despise warhawks and I despite climate change centrists. You know how some people really hate Todd-akin style misogynists or Delay-style corrupt tyrants, to the point where ‘Governor so-and-so supports forced vaginal ultrasounds for abortions’ completely colors their perception of a person? Well, that’s how I feel about people who disrupt governments, bomb civilians, and brag about support from Negroponte and Kissinger.
So, being a centrist of any sort seems to be a type of politician that you intensely dislike, or is it just this particular candidate? While it is currently fashionable to despise centrists on both the right and the left, the truth is that compromise is made in the center, not on the right or on the left.
It’s that unwillingness to compromise, heretofore more prevalent on the right than on the left, that has the country in the legislative desert that we’ve occupied for the last 6 years. That recent post by Booman re the current weakness of the institutions which have made governing and progress in this country possible is being undermined by a lack of respect and belief in the institutions of governing does not bode well for a functioning American democracy. Compromise and dealing are what politicians and political candidates must do. They cannot be purists. But, obviously you don’t agree.
So, being a centrist of any sort seems to be a type of politician that you intensely dislike, or is it just this particular candidate? While it is currently fashionable to despise centrists on both the right and the left, the truth is that compromise is made in the center, not on the right or on the left.
It’s that unwillingness to compromise, heretofore more prevalent on the right than on the left, that has the country in the legislative desert that we’ve occupied for the last 6 years. That recent post by Booman re the current weakness of the institutions which have previously made governing and progress in this country possible has been largely undermined by the belief held by large numbers of Republican voters that government doesn’t and can’t by its very nature govern effectively. As he made clear, this does not bode well for a functioning American democracy.
Compromise and dealing are what politicians and political candidates must do. They cannot be purists. But, you obviously don’t agree and I’d guess you won’t be supporting the Democratic ticket in November.
I literally have never heard of any of the supposed “disasters” you reference here, and i’m following the campaign closely.
Maybe none of it requires an apology from anyone. It’s not a big deal. It’s not even a small deal.
What is becoming ever clearer is that some people will be calling Hillary a terrible candidate even if she wins the Presidency. It’s a ludicrous position for them to take, yet they will take it.
You and the people you cluster with haven’t heard of these public relations gaffes, therefore they don’t matter or point to an underlying problem, therefore Clinton being an uncool dork isn’t actually a thing. Got it.
The thing is:
Hillary Clinton is showing no additional strength in demographics historically sympathetic to Democrats except for…
Hillary Clinton is currently being buoyed by support by women, particularly white college-educated women. This would end the argument right there, except for…
Hillary Clinton did not and does not (back a couple of weeks ago when they matched her against drop-out candidates) have this polling support against non-total pig candidates. When the media matched her up against non-Trump candidates, including Cruz and Kasich, she did significantly worse. This indicates to me that it’s less about Hillary Clinton’s strength and more about Trump’s deep weaknesses.
Todd Akin got smoked against McCaskill in 2012. That does not mean that she’s a good candidate, since Todd Akin got destroyed for obvious and verifiable reasons.
McCaskill beat an incumbent Senator in Missouri in 2006. No, I don’t care for some of her rhetoric, but she’s a damn sight better than Senator Talent.
As to the rest of your writings here lately, hell, douse yet another towering strawwoman in gasoline and light that fucker up. No one’s gonna stop you.
Okay? So what does that have to do with the assertion that because she smoked Todd Akin that doesn’t really prove much in the way of anything of her talent as a candidate?
Don’t let yourself get sidetracked by the analogy here. I was taking to task your assertion that a Hillary Clinton victory against an extremely flawed candidate doesn’t say anything about her prowess in of itself. ‘The victor is a dorky and untalented contestant’ and ‘the victor completely dominated the top brackets’ are not contradictions when you add in the third caveat of ‘the competition was much worse than the victor’. If everyone who enters the Olympic weightlifting preliminaries and finales this year were somehow toddlers and I whupped their ass in the competition, that doesn’t mean that I am a good weightlifter. Doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a bad one either, but my honestly-earned gold medal is not somehow proof of my weightlifting prowess.
“So what does that have to do with the assertion that because she smoked Todd Akin that doesn’t really prove much in the way of anything of her talent as a candidate?”
In her first Statewide campaign, McCaskill beat an incumbent Republican Senator from Missouri.
2004 Presidential election, Missouri results
George W. Bush 53.3%
John Kerry 46.1%
2006 Midterm election, Missouri Senate results
Claire McCaskill 49.6%
Jim Talent 47.3%
2008 Presidential election, Missouri results
John McCain 49.43%
Barack Obama 49.29%
I suggest that you’re ignoring the electoral challenges liberals typically face in midterms, particularly in a State which remains a red state even in Presidential elections. It is peculiar that you’re doing this, because you have made use of the liberal coalition’s lack of success in turning out for midterms to support other arguments you have forwarded.
Also, given the polarization of the electorate, beating the 2012 Republican Senate nominee in Missouri 54.7% to 39.2% is a remarkably good performance, regardless of the quality of the candidate. And you’re discounting the fact that Akin had won six Congressional elections in the State.
Finally, you’re not even making the case for McCaskill being a bad or mediocre candidate. So what are we talking about here?
As to your perspective on Clinton, yes, I understand, you believe the almost certain winner of the 2016 Presidential election is a bad candidate who is running a bad campaign. I think that’s ludicrous on its face.
One correction: Before winning her Senate campaign, McCaskill won election and re-election for State Auditor of Missouri.
Oh for crying out loud, you have completely lost the plot here.
I am completely uninterested in talking about McCaskill’s relative skills. I was taking down your original assertion, which was that a big win by HRC in November would disprove the idea that she’s a terrible candidate.
I have no idea why you think that nitpicking an analogy would suddenly allow you to win the original assertion, but it’s really tedious watching you not only move the goalposts but demand on a different sport mid-match.
I think you’ve got one heck of a burden when you essentially claim that the prohibitive favorite to win the U.S. Presidential election is a bad candidate who has run a bad campaign.
It’s literally uniquely difficult to win; that’s inherent to the endeavor.
Policy?!
Policy!?
Are you kidding me?
Policy?
That’s silly.
Hillary Clinton obviously plans to rerun the same playbook of half-hearted social liberalism/economic centrism that every national Democratic leader since Dukakis has run. Meaning: indifference to the carceral state, climate change centrism, warhawkery, increasing indifference to the influence of money in politics, indifference to income inequality and the decline of unionism, and a whole bunch of lame-ass talk that gives the commentariat stiffies but won’t result in any short or long-term change.
Of course, she and her inner circle are also patronizing and arrogant enough to believe that they can still make an emotional case for voting for Hillary Clinton with that political strategy if they polish their messaging enough. Meaning: sick press conferences and owning Donald Drumpf on Twitter and well-timed John Oliver zingers is enough to get people to ignore the shadiness of the Clinton Foundation and her choice to choose a neoliberal pro-life clod as her VP.
Hillary Clinton is doomed to look like a massive dork for the same reason that Poochie, XFL, and Pick Up Artists are doomed to look like massive dorks: manipulative condescension is the fastest way to completely ruin your cool.
Yeah, probably. Ain’t America great?
It should take time to get an electrician’s license. A poorly trained electrician could start fires and/or kill people.
Hairdressers, sure.
But as you point out, these are local issues, not federal ones.
Yeah. I guess she could demand that states give up their barber licensing powers because unlike, say, pharmaceutical companies, barbers aren’t yet as organized to fight against federal regulations. But they probably could organize more quickly than one might think.