It’s probably not easy for a paper like the Omaha World-Herald to endorse Hillary Clinton. The former First Lady is polling about fifteen points behind Trump in Nebraska and 538 gives her 4.6% chance of winning the state. Of course, Nebraska is one of only two states (along with Maine) to allocate its Electoral College votes by congressional district, and Clinton has a better chance of winning Omaha’s seat than the state as a whole. Still, I am sure the mail the World-Herald gets after this endorsement will be heavily negative.
You don’t have to go too far into the past to find Democrats winning statewide in Nebraska, but former senators Bob Kerrey and Ben Nelson always had to walk a careful line in what is a fairly conservative state. Maybe that’s why the editorial board admonishes Clinton that “Americans will need her to be a uniting president, working from the center, and not advancing an agenda that will further alienate moderates and conservatives.”
I’d be more impressed with this if I had the foggiest idea how it could be accomplished. If Merrick Garland isn’t confirmed by the Senate in the lame duck session of Congress, Clinton’s first order of business will be to push through his (or her alternative’s) nomination, and that will give the Supreme Court its first true liberal majority since 1971. What will follow are a series of rulings that will surely “alienate” conservatives.
But at least that change in our political landscape and fortunes has merit as something that ought to discomfort Republicans. The problem is that pretty much everything Hillary Clinton does will be called divisive even if its deliberately designed to be the opposite.
If we’re going to give lectures, here, I don’t think we should start with Clinton. We should start with the opposition party because we saw how they reacted to President Bill Clinton and we saw how they reacted to Barack Obama. They nominated a Birther, for chrissakes, and that was after resolving before Obama could even be sworn in that they would use every tool in the box to obstruct his agenda.
How about a lecture about giving President Hillary Clinton some benefit of the doubt and working with her on infrastructure spending, national security, criminal justice and tax reform, and immigration?
That would be more appropriate, in my opinion.
They are gonna be tripping over themselves to approve Garland–for his age if nothing else.
Assumes a certain level of sanity and long term rationality that the Republican Party does not possess.
Once the firestorm of recriminations start flying on November 9 nobody on the Republican side is going to threaten their job security by doing anything that can remotely be considered traitorous, i.e. non- nihilistic.
McCain promised this morning that the GOP will continue to unite against any Supreme Court nominee at all if Hillary is elected.
McCain has to say such things if he wants to stay in the Senate. I lived in Arizona for over 20 years. I’ve had conversations with seemingly rational people who actually had decent IQs who swore up and down that the earth is flat. He’s got to reach out to the loonies on those things they really care about and that others don’t particularly notice. Court appointments are at the top of that list.
HS in Omaha.
I wasn’t as politically aware and attentive as now, of course (I was a kid!), but still fairly attentive and aware for a HS kid.
Aware enough to know and approve of our pet name, The Omaha Weird-Harold (in our defense, we didn’t yet know about Cosby’s hidden nature either).
So yeah, the Weird-Harold endorsing Hillary is pretty breathtaking.
I had forgotten about the Weird Harold. I talked to an old man in a bar for about 2 hours in Omaha on my 21st birthday (got stuck on a MAC flight in high winds and snow in Jan, ’72). He ranted on and on about the newspaper.
Yes I expect a majority of them to n-tuple down on their craziness. It’s all they have.
Sorry this was a reply to Los Gatos above.
It’s gotten to the stage where a two-bit regional newspaper could garner national headlines for being the first to endorse Trump…
Like this? Trump gets first general election daily newspaper endorsement: “Rachel Maddow reports that Donald Trump’s historic streak of zero daily newspaper endorsements in the general election campaign has finally been broken but the unexplained endorsement of the Santa Barbara News-Press.”
I guess the check cleared?
That’s not it. That paper’s editorial board is just completely whacked. That whole paper is whacked.
If this post were a comment, I’d want to rate it a 5.
Here’s to hoping the Omaha World-Herald doesn’t get the reaction that the Arizona Republic did: How do we respond to threats after our endorsement? This is how.
that article tells you what kind of people the trumpanzees are. deplorable is the politest possible thing to say about them.
Time for 1865 solutions?
No. Time for 1864 solutions. It was in 1865 that the traitors were left off the hook and we’ve seen where that’s taken us. 1864 saw the great campaigns when the secesh were taught what it’s like to commit treason against the elected government.
And did you see that comment from Arizona’s own John McCain.
That the Senate won’t vote on any Hillary Supreme nominees either?
Something needs to drive a stake through the heart of the GOP. I’m actually hoping Trump will be a first step in this process.
Surprisingly though, and to his credit, McCain proceeded to offer this needed corrective (which cannot be emphasized enough and needs to be relentlessly pounded through the thick skulls of Corporate Media Villagers minimizing crimes Trump confessed to as “offensive comments” or such):
Isn’t lecturing Hillary a national pastime, especially if you’re praising her?
The World Herald should be cut a lot of slack. Honestly, they barely admonished Clinton at all. It was just a throw-away line at the end, a tiny fig leaf to offset the wrath they will receive. This endorsement took enormous courage. Nebraska’s not only rock solid red but it’s people have that mid-western black and white thinking that offers no quarter to those who see the world from another perspective. They’re really sticking their neck out in endorsing the woman, the Democrat, someone who has been demonized so ferociously and for so long and, in fairness, someone with the kind of legitimate luggage that makes it challenging even for those on the left to fully endorse.
The underlying dynamic of this election is the cultural divide between the urban and rural areas. Most of what a President could do to address that is symbolic, and it’s hard for Clinton to do symbolism effectively because most see her as cynical. Her best solution is to devise policies that will benefit the rural areas, and let them chill out on their cultural issues. Those solutions, though, will be Sanders-esque, and although Bernie pressured some of that stuff into the platform, it’s not yet clear if Clinton or the Congressional Dems mean it, nor if the gems will take Congress.
One thing she can’t avoid is dealing with the police killings of black people. She has promised to address this, and it has to mean some federal regulation of local police, or at lest imposed accountability. That will push all the big government buttons, as well as the racist buttons, but I don’t know what else to do. Something clearly must be done, and the system as it is seems incapable of holding police accountable.
Increasing the minimum wage, treatment for drug addition, and redevelopment assistance for coal country are three things I can think of that Hillary wanted to do purely on her own, no Sanders necessary. As so often, when people say she doesn’t care about rural areas they are attacking faults she doesn’t have.
“… although Bernie pressured some of that stuff into the platform, it’s not yet clear if Clinton or the Congressional Dems mean it … “
I thought about that a lot during the primaries and after, and I was thinking about it just today. And my view has clarified a bit. One thing I am sure of — whether they mean it or not, they DO at least get it. They have to, because it’s not only the reason Bernie did so well, but also to a considerable extent why Trump has done so well. Politically, the GOP establishment has lost control, and the DEM establishment has retained control only because they are listening to Warren and Sanders. And they are listening to them because they know they have to.
The texts of a few of her Goldman Sachs speeches have been leaked at a good time. It’s not going to change any votes. So many of her supporters know this particular flaw of hers. Now we have the proof. She cannot govern for Goldman Sachs. We’re on to that. Not in the paranoid way of the Trumpistas, who can’t even spell “Goldman Sachs”. We know it as a fact. You can even see in the discussions that the hillary people and the Goldman people knew when she was giving those speeches that they were sitting on a time bomb.
Sanders and Warren are now campaigning in Denver for Hillary. She needs them. And she’s going to continue to need them to have any hope of governing this divided nation. (Forget about the Trumpistas, they prefer Putin.)
As for the “gems” winning Congress, nobody knows. Stay tuned.
Stop ALL talk of privatizing the Post Office and put in postal banks. You cannot imagine the hurt and fury that bit of cronyism would engender in Red America.
…. and the DEM establishment has retained control only because they are listening to Warren and Sanders. And they are listening to them because they know they have to.
I disagree. Assumes facts not in evidence. Just because Warren & Sanders are campaigning for Clinton doesn’t mean the Democratic establishment will change or do things differently. They won, which is all that matters to them. You do remember what happened after Obama won, right? What happened to the EFCA? Do you remember the story of the EFCA? As just one example.
That was under different assumptions than we operate under presently. Do you understand that Peter Orszag is taking to financial times to lay out where they (financial elites) believe their influence is? They know they can’t get “their people” in personnel spots because they require senate confirmation, and they know it isn’t worth wasting political capital fighting Warren/Sanders/Merkley over it. Larry Summers was but a foreshadowing, and they know it. Their dominance is over.
We’ll see. Part of it depends on who controls the Senate, and by how many, come January.
She does not agree with us on SUBSTANCE. Her defenders and her attackers within the party don’t seem to get this.
For her to shift she is in her mind adopting a less effective.
Which she is unlikely to do beyond the margins very often.
Progressives are the red army to Clinton staffers.
“federal regulation of local police” is gonna be a tough sell to the Supreme Court, even a liberal one. The federal govt does better offering carrots than sticks, usually.
Perhaps regulating through the police union contracts, where a lot of the impunity is codified? And a hard look at prosecutorial impartiality, though elective office is SUPPOSED to encourage that.
Maybe you’re right. I don’t much like fed regulation either, but Clinton has to address it somehow.
Off-topic, but it seems likely that law enforcement will be able to solve the NC GOP office bombing and equally likely that it’s some sort of boneheaded stunt by misguided Trumpistas. Reminds me of that scandal last cycle in LA.
“Americans will need [him] to be a uniting president, working from the center….”
Oh yeah, I bet they admonished Dubya that way, too.
In a parallel universe, maybe.
Get a mandate. Get political capital. Spend political capital. As the winner sees fit, not as the loser demands.