Digby asks why The Donald seems to be doubling down on the Woman Card with respect to Hillary Clinton.
Here’s my theory: Digby and her buddies have been playing up racism, ie the Race Card, for 8 long years now. If anyone wasn’t enchanted with Obama because they preferred the more experienced candidate, they were called racists.
Same with everything else.
Didn’t like the way the bankers got off? You’re a racist
Think the administration’s response to long term unemployment was inadequate? You’re a racist.
Think Obamacare is too expensive and the deductibles require too much skin in the game while the control on costs was laughably absent? You’re a racist.
Oooo, here’s a good one:
If you are a conservative who approves of the Republicans blocking Merrick Garland’s appointment to the Supreme Court, you’re a racist who doesn’t like Obama as president. This last one went too far. The Republicans can legitmately deny that accusation because they approved Kagan and Sotomayor. The problem isn’t racism or Obama. The problem is Republicans want to retain their one seat advantage. They’d block any candidate who isn’t a strict, federalist conservative. It has nothing to do with Obama’s race. He could be red with yellow polka dots. The fact that he’s really a moderate conservative at heart is not good enough for McConnell et al. They can come up with dozens of silly and unconstitutional excuses to not approve Garland. They don’t need to be racists.
Frankly, Digby, the race card has been played wickedly well by Democrats and the media and voters are fed up with it. It has been used as a bludgeon to silence anyone who dares to criticize Obama and his policies. I’m a liberal and I just voted for John Fetterman for Senate in PA. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not conservative or racist. But I have had to put up with 8 long years of this racism accusation shit and I’m tired of it. Obama has done a lot of things that aren’t even close to being liberal enough for me. If my head hadn’t dictated my choices, I could very easily see myself voting for Bernie. His supporters seem to be the only ones who are legitimately able to criticize Obama without being called racists.
Everyone knows he is not Jesus but we didn’t allow ourselves to apply any corrective action for eight long years.
Yeah, there are racists out there. But mostly, people are just pissed off that they can’t get heard and when they object to anything, they’re the equivalent of the KKK according to Digby and all the pro-Obama journalists (David Plotz admits they were totally in the tank for Obama).
So, here comes a legitimate, honest to god, hard working, well respected, smart, life-long public servant, who will be our nominee who is also a woman. WE all know she’s good but she is also not Jesus.
This is Trump’s way of nipping it in the bud.
He is defanging us.
She may be historic but if you think his voters are going to let themselves get rolled again, you’re crazy.
Please, Digby, stop helping.
But Wait! There’s more!
Trump must have noticed how disgracefully Hillary was treated by her own party. Do I have to play the Bitch video again? In fact, it was Trump who said that Hillary had gotten “Schlonged”. Yeah, nice guy is our Donald.
I remember the Obots calling it very rough political hardball, as if that was supposed to make it better that women in general were treated to the dark archetypes of the male Democrats’ psyches. I can’t be the only one to notice that women in general lost some authority and respect after that primary. It was brutal.
In order to defend against Trump, Democrats and journalists are going to have to rally around Hillary. That means the Democrats who were the most vociferous assholes in 2008 are going to have to start walking it back. Not only walking it back but vigorously defending her. I won’t hold my breath.
As for journalists, they are magpies. They’re fascinated by Trump and his pink marble grotesques. And they hate Hillary. No, it’s not rational. For all we know, the feeling is mutual. They should never have gone rifling through her real estate deals, law firm billing records or cookie recipes. There’s a great deal of mutual animosity. Don’t expect them to come to her rescue. Expect them to watch this all play out like they would watch an approaching asteroid. It’s great for ratings, people will be thrilled to the very last minute, and there will be plenty to report when the Second Great Extinction happens.
Donald isn’t presidential. Not in the least. But he knows how to fight dirty and he will drag us all down into the gutter with him.
Filed under: General | Tagged: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, racism, woman card |
The Confluence 
Bravo! I wish you had a like/love button- I’d be using it. I love it when you get fiery. And the reference to the slimeball’s recent comment was welcome.You probably have dealt with worse over the years.
And then I think- What Would Hillary Do ? She’s dealt with the slimeballs for ages!
Us Democrats better rally around Hillary to defend her- I don’t hold out much hope for the media,although some might come around.
I thought Hillary had a great response and it was to make fun of Trump.
I wish I could figure out how to link it here, but go to Hillary’s twitter page, scroll a fair way down to her short clip of her appearance with Jimmy Fallon this week, particularly if you need a genuine smile today. 😀
I saw it. This has nothing to do with Hillary’s response. It is a dog whistle to Anyone who’s had enuf of being called a racist in the last 8 years.
Two completely separate things.
I’m sure she has other plans for Donald but we shouldn’t be at all surprised when he goes there on women. The fact is that Digby *is* surprised. Their lazy plan to run another historic candidate will meet resistance. They’re going to have to do better than that.
I became one of the banned and the disappeared over at Digby. That started when she brought in David Atkins to co-host her blog.
She then started something called “ghosting” apparently, which is where the commenter’s comment appears to appear on the commenter’s own computer screen, but does not even appear at all
on anyone else’s screenview of that same thread. After that, Digby began banning evermore Obama-critical commenters. And a while after that, Digby cancelled the comments section of her blog so her worshipful audience could be spared the pain of Obama-critical comments.
(The only person I know of getting banned for Obama-unrelated reasons was commenter Jill Bains. Apparently Digby felt personally insulted by Bains over something or other.)
I first read about this happening at Digby when another commenter left a comment about it happening in real-time. That other commenter left links to a thing called ” The Ccrawdad Hhole” with some deeply hostile and very funny posts about Spoonie-poo Atkins.
Towards the end there, information surface here and there about various low-level liberal DemParty members trying to get a 2012 primary challenge to Obama started. The California DemParty moved fast and hard to expel any member who was involved in any such activity. I don’t know if other state DemParties did the same thing. In the California, David Atkins was somehow involved, and was certainly bragging very loud and hard about it in various posts in various places. I guess it was the ability to do stuff like this that made Digby decide that Atkins was a crucial addition to her blog.
I found ancient archived Digbys at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine . . . to see if the comments were preserved there. But no comments are preserved there. Perhaps the Internet Archivers felt that archiving the comments as well as the posts took up too much computer space. So those wonderful threads are lost and gone forever.
I expect Digby actually knew better, but feared the scarlet “R”.
Points to consider.Obama’s popularity ratings have actually risen from the mid 40’s to around 53%. I believe that is because Cruz, Trump and Rubio’s and their childish skirmishes.
Second point, Once videos start being edited showing Trump raving about well know individuals, then slamming them in the next edit, he will be toast. According to Cannonfire the Trump presser where he showed off Trump Steaks and other Trump products was all a fabrication. Most people don’t know that, yet.
Trump knows his base. For any other pol, it would look like he doesn’t want to win.
Potential: There is a large contingent of voters who have suffered with the economy and poor quality jobs. Where the “blame” is placed matters.
For leftys, it is the banks, the rich, and quietly (but not silently) minorities, including women. Reddit/4chan crowd. They are talking among themselves about the futility of the degree they earned but don’t have a job while forced to live with parents. They are ripe for the picking with the right message playing into that blame since Sanders is almost done but tossing matches over his shoulder.
For right leaning men, the “blame” is the same except they want to have these obstacles moved so they can pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Oh, and just blow up the problems around the world and close our borders. I don’t think the view of the problem source is that different. They are already supporting Trump.
The Lefty base is available for the right message that gives voice to winning against the causes of the pain. There are many who super hate SJW’s and any drum beating about sexist messaging will feed them more and tie them to Trump.
The more “we” get excited about sexist dog whistles – the more the haters of SJW will gravitate to Trump, at least in my opinion this is the risk. I would also be concerned about other marginalized groups feeling like we only care about sexism.
Which leftys are blaming what minorities for the ongoing economic decay? Any links to evidence of leftys blaming minorities?
I count women as a minority – but absolutely there are young people who count themselves among leftys that have issues with affirmative action and the idea that they as young white men they are disadvantaged in education assistance and job assistance. Look at ANY comment section on reddit about women coding bootcamps, scholarship awards, hiring minorities and you will see it – Sanders supporters today but feeling left out of the few crumbs of opportunity. If you need linky goodness to believe, I’ll dig some up for you.
Sounds so familiar. The med chemists in my dept used to complain about the only female manager hired in like forever because they could think of so many more deserving men.
That is the Obot-Bernie boy contingent in a nutshell.
Your reply is specific enough that I believe it right there. Some linky goodness would still be good so I can see specimens of it . .. because I am as reddit-illiterate as I am twitter-illiterate and facebook-illiterate and would never be able to find them on my own.
The question would still remain . . . what percent of self-identified leftys would be what you describe, but the specimens would be interesting to read on their own, whatever further-size population they do or don’t stand for.
Percentage would be tough to find since they would be less loyal to the democratic party and possibly not interested in all leftist ideas. Knowing that number now would be unreliably and probably something that would show up in exit polling data where former democrat supporters cross over to Trump.
I have heard plenty of lefties talk about people losing their homes during the housing crisis as people who didn’t deserve those homes. Totally devoid of any empathy as to what people were going through much the same as the tea partiers.
How about people who lost their teeth?
You will have to update me on that information as I haven’t heard about people losing their teeth though I imagine people struggling and can’t afford the dentist.
Were those lefties talking about near-poor owners of the house they lived in? Were those lefties talking about property-flipping speculative buyer-sellers of multiple homes? Or were those lefties too imprecise in their use of language to make it clear what they were talking about?
Well, they certainly weren’t talking about property flippers. It seemed to me they were mostly talking about middle class people who lost their homes.
There are SJWs who are hated because they are such vile and hateful people. My niece started going to a nice lefty liberal arts college in the midwest and was driven out within a few months because her liberal self was not lefty liberadical eNOUGH for the SJWs on campus. They weren’t prepared to accept her statements that she cared about certain things. They demanded she prove how much she truly Care care CARED about these things.
She ended up leaving and goes somewhere else now.
Hillary’s abilities and intelligence transcend any classification by gender, or age or anything else. Trump and his new handler, the insidiious Paul Manafort, would love to make the election about gender, trying to convince disgruntled White males to decide that Hillary’s candidacy is only a product of the women’s movement, foisted on the public by the establishment powers. That is always the potential flip side of a “statement candidate,” which Hillary certainly is not. She is by far the most gifted and competent candidate in the race, the best candidate in the last fifty years, at least.
Trump is dangerous and unknowledgeable, but he has a low cunning, and everything he says in life is geared to help him by caricaturing his foes. A responsible media would have made this line of attack impossible, simply by having acknowledged that Hillary has a masterful grasp of issues and nuance. But you can see that the media never does that. In fact, outside of giving her some credit for winning some primaries, I have scarcely ever seen anyone there say anything positive about her attributes. Virtually all of the media discussion about Hillary is about “negatives” concocted by the right wing, or the Democratic left wing. So we have all of this “Who is the real Hillary?” nonsense, when to anyone who has actually followed her, and who has understanding of governance, she is really the same liberal Democrat she has always been. And she is ethical and honest, no matter how much the media helps her enemies purvey their mythologies about her.
But because the media hates and resents her, and because both they and the general populace have a disdain for high intelligence, they invest her with very few positive attributes, and this allows Trump to try to claim that she has no abilities beyond her gender identifcation, and that people are only voting for her because they think that we should have a woman President. Actually, plenty of the Sanders devotees have been making similar comments during the campaign. It is insulting to both her and her supporters. Even so, I hope that she mostly talks about issues which matter to virtually everyone in this country, and avoids the potential trap of playing on Trump’s turf, which is insults, caricatures, and cultural divisiveness. A debate about the historical position of women in America, which some of her media surrogates have recently been eager to engage in, could be a detour which Trump and the media would love, but which actually distracts from Hillary’s more overarching capabilities.
Well said. That clip of her on the Jimmy Fallon show was telling… I think her strategy will be to not dignify his baiting with a response.
I may at some future time link to relevant articles on Colonel Lang’s Sic Semper Tyrannis blog. For now I will just link to his latest post which shows that he is a very firm Constitutionalist so people here may catch the tenor of his thought.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/04/httpswwwwashingtonpostcomnewscheckpointwp20160425commander-of-bin-laden-raid-blasts-senate-for-disrespecting-mili.html#comments
If Republicans is open minded, at least they will let Garland speak before them. Let Garland be judge by who he is and by his platform. Republicans won’t lose seat advantage, and they can refuse to choose Garland if he, turns out, is not conservative enough.
But i shouldn’t say that. I believe Republicans understand that in the land of the free, people should be judge by his ideas, not because he is choosen by opposition President
Sorry, that’s not how it works. The president appoints the Supreme Court justices. Obama is a very moderate conservative Democrat. His choice of garland is not a surprise and is Far less liberal than many Democrats but that’s obama’s choice because he was elected president.
The senate’s only role is to decide whether garland is qualified to join the court. Does he know the law and the constitution? Is he a person of good character? If he is, approve him and get on with it.
The senate approval process is not supposed to devolve into a political contest and series of litmus tests.
Of course, we all know that that is exactly what has happened but technically that’s not what senate approval is supposed to be.
The senate doesn’t get to decide the judicial temperament of the judge. The president does that. The senate’s job is to make sure the nominee isn’t going to use the office as a platform for radical thinking. Incremental change is normal. Crazy ass conservatism isn’t. The Republicans have had an incredible streak of good luck for 40 years and got more and more crazy right justices appointed. That’s how we got citizens United and rollback of the voting rights act. Understandably, they don’t want to give that up. But it’s not really up to them. Whether or not I like Obama, he was elected and the choice of justice is up to him. He’s the one entitled to leave his imprint and judicial philosophy on the court. If he’s wise, he won’t choose an absolute looney toons justice. That’s what he did.
Now, the senate is obligated by the constitution to give him a hearing to see if he knows his stuff and check his character.
That’s it.
That’s the way it used to work when I was younger, until Reagan nominated Robert Bork who got stopped. Then bush I nominated Clarence Thomas who was approved and was neither qualified or of impeccable character.
The Republicans are spoiled. That doesn’t mean they can continue to get their way. As long as the nominee isn’t too far off the mainstream, the senate should confirm.
I’ve done some research into Salon.com, and I think I know why they are in Trump’s corner. And please note: Their latest articles prove that Salon is pro-Trump, not just pro-Bernie.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2016/04/wanna-know-salons-dark-secrets-site-is.html
I normally do not promote my stories — not here, not anywhere else. But this is original research and, I think breakthrough information.
I’m asking Hillary supporters and progressives in general to double-check my research. I don’t want other sites to link to me: It would be better if you tried to prove me wrong. If you think I’m right about Salon’s dark secrets, then carry the research forward. And spread the news!
I read your piece, and it is indeed frightening. The corporate oligarchs who want to take over the entire country will all be out to elect Trump and defeat Hillary, who is the biggest threat to them in decades. They will even put up with Trump’s fascism along the way.