Ferpetessakes, will the real Democratic party please grow up??

Well, that didn’t take long. According to the New York Times, Hillary is supposed to come to the rescue of the Democratic party going into 2016:

In the coming weeks, Hillary Rodham Clinton will stop delivering paid speeches. She will embark on an unofficial listening tour to gather ideas from the business community, union leaders and others. And she will seek advice from such far-flung advisers as an ad man in Austin, Tex., behind the iconic “Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign and a leading strategist at a Boston-based public affairs consulting firm with ties to the Kennedys.

The Democratic debacle in Tuesday’s midterm elections has put new urgency on Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to create a blueprint for a 2016 presidential candidacy, including exploring White Plains as a possible national headquarters and digesting exit polls to determine what the midterm results could mean for the presidential electoral map

A number of advisers saw only upside for Mrs. Clinton in the party’s midterm defeats. Before then, opinions had been mixed about when she should form an exploratory committee, the first step toward declaring a presidential candidacy, with some urging her to delay it until late spring.

No pressure or anything.

I will acknowledge that there are many people in the country who have been waiting six long years for her to jump back into politics.  But the Democrats are the most messed up party I have ever seen.  They have the strategic thinking of two year olds who insist on doing things themselves but want a parent around to save them after they find they’ve messed up and are throwing a fit about it.

And there will be some Democrats who will never accept her even while they grudgingly admit there is no one else who has her cachet.  They’re still convinced that she’s a corporatist and a neoliberal.

Can I just say right here that I will be very disappointed if bloggers and their audiences continue to use these words?  If given a choice, I would much prefer to work in a corporate lab. That’s because I wouldn’t have to negotiate for services with every other part of my project team. I could just walk down the hall and ask the guy in analytical or medicinal chemistry or whatever if I could join their queue. Some industries work better in corporate environments. They get more stuff done. Does that make me a corporatist? That being said, the MBAs who run some of these corporations should be in jail. But the Democrats screaming “Corporatists!” aren’t differentiating. I find it disturbing. It’s the same with the word “neoliberal”. What exactly does that mean or is it a catch all for anything you don’t like? In other words, stop using these labels and think through your issues with any candidate, not just Hillary.

As I was looking up stuff on narcissism and how the narcissist operates, I came across the term “triangulation”. This is not the same triangulation that Dick Morris advised Bill Clinton to do after his party lost midterm elections. No, this refers to the practice of narcissists to keep otherwise allies from speaking to one another. For example, if there is a narcissist in your family, you will find him/her by looking at the number of people who are not speaking to one another. Narcissists hoard secrets and other valuable pieces of information.  In order to control relationships between people, the narcissist acts as an intermediary and uses these secrets to influence the perceptions of people in the relationship. Before long, no one is speaking to anyone. Everyone is either hurling accusations or becoming defensive. There are a lot of hurt feelings. The family becomes dysfunctional and the narcissist has achieved her goal. No one communicates except through her.

The solution to this is pretty straightforward: cut out the narcissist. But for some peculiar reason, that’s very hard to do. They tend to be the people who *seem* so credible.

We are being manipulated by some of the most selfish people on the planet. They bought the party back in 2008, installed their enabler, got him to go easy on them, and they continue to stir up trouble between the various parts of the Democratic party.  We can not talk to one another about Hillary without accusations flying and defenders becoming angry and bitter.

Look, I don’t care if you personally like Hillary Clinton. All I’m interested in is if you can judge fairly. Right now, I can’t see how that is going to happen. Is she corrupt? If not, will she make a good president? Those are the only two questions I am asking right now.

I’m not expecting her to save the party’s bacon. It seems to me that the Obama administration and it’s supporters have asked the Clintons to do this one too many times over the past six years and then they turn around and continue to beat the s^&* out of both of them in the comments section of every blog continuing to divide us up into two camps. This is exactly what I would love to see if I were a selfish, narcissistic power addict. No one is getting along. The scapegoat always tries to do the right thing for the party and then gets trashed.

Note that I didn’t say the scapegoat is perfect. One thing we should all be on our guard against is the way bad people manipulate good people by sowing mistrust. There’s nothing that works so well as the need for perfection. We Democrats are a bunch of sanctimonious Angel Clare’s in this respect, turning up our delicate noses at the merest hint of political acumen or ability to raise money. But political acumen is how politicians get things done and they all take money because to do otherwise means they can’t run. The questions that should be asked are who is giving the money, how much are they giving with respect to each candidate and what are they getting in return?

If Democrats had been more critical in their thinking in the spring of 2008, the party might have been more robust right now. But in any case, Hillary is human. She’s not the party’s mother. It is time for the party to grow up, figure out who its real friends are and stop listening to every Ivy league male grad student activist who was in elementary school when Bill Clinton supposedly sold out poor people and single handedly revoked Glass-Steagall while causing global warming. Likewise, if Hillary doesn’t make it all better instantly after the party insisted on doing it all itself for six years, that’s just too damn bad. There are people, like myself, who have taken huge economic hits because the person in charge after the financial collapse was a politically inept neophyte and we’re disgusted with the way the so-called “creative class’s” messiah has performed.

We don’t have time for that kind of immaturity anymore.

Telltale signs of buyer’s remorse

Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald, who *used* to be one of my favorite bloggers, posted a piece that was beneath him.  In How New Is Obama’s New Politics?, Glenn attempts to rationalize why Obama can get away with “triangulation” even though Obama’s whole shtick during the primaries, and the single most important thing that set him apart from Hillary Clinton (or so he said), is that he is not a triangulator.

Triangulation was THE selling point.  Obama was above negotiating with lobbyists.  Obama would not have negotiated on the Iraq War Resolution.  Obama was not going to compromise on “don’t ask, don’t tell”.  Triangulation was old and nasty.  Obama was NEW and fresh!

Well, we now know that Obama is not new and fresh.  He smells just like the old gym socks but he’s never done anything but sit on the bench while everyone else played.

Not to worry, says Glenn:

Ultimately, the reason politics is unavoidably “divisive” is because people have really divergent and irreconcilable views on passion-provoking controversies.  That’s what politics is.  It’s what it always has been.  At some point, Obama either will or won’t repeal DOMA and don’t-ask-don’t-tell; he either will or won’t rescind Bush’s anti-abortion regulations and appoint new Supreme Court Justices likely to re-affirm Roe; he either will or won’t close Gitmo; he either will or won’t withdraw from Iraq; he either will or won’t investigate Bush war crimes; he either will or won’t deliver on his promises to unions, etc.  People feel very strongly — and very differently — about those issues.

Someone is going to be angered and feel alienated by what decision he makes, by the outcome, and symbolic paeans to inclusion are unlikely to soothe that.  Those who are eager to escape confrontation, divisions, and angry disputes can probably do so only by renouncing any actual political principles, and are probably best advised to avoid politics altogether.  Because of the very nature of politics — to say nothing of the nature of the contemporary American Right — politics is highly unlikely to exist without angry, often ugly, conflicts of that sort.

Reasonable arguments can certainly be advanced in defense of the virtues of Obama’s post-partisan theory of politics.  But it’s simply unreasonable to depict any of it as new.  It’s exactly what Democrats have been clinging to, desperately and mostly with futility, for two decades at least.  Trans-partisan harmony comes only when Democrats agree to sacrifice what they claim their beliefs are and to show contempt for the “Left,” and even then, the “harmony” is fleeting, insatiably greedy and inch-deep.  It’s certainly possible things will be different this time around, but in the absence of actual evidence, it’s really hard to understand why so many people have become so intractably convinced that it will be.

But Glenn is wrong.  Obama’s supporters and even those of us who think he is exactly the corrupt, “country club” Republican, ultra-rich contributor loving politician that we have always said he is, have every reason to expect that Obama will do everything he said he will do- and more.  Why is that?  It’s because he has solid majorities in both houses of Congress.  With Al Franken on the cusp of winning in MN, he has nearly a filibuster proof majority.  And due to the historic economic period we are going through, the public is going to demand that he take quick and decisive measures to turn things around.  In short, he has a perfect window of time to apply a Democratic version of “shock and awe” measures to turn the country around.  If Republicans get in his way, the public is much more likely to side with the Democrat.

It isn’t like the 90’s when Bill Clinton, who Glenn uses as an excuse for Obama to triangulate at will, was president.  Bill Clinton never had a mandate and quickly lost his edge with Congress in 1994 when Newt Gingrich and his “Contract with America” swept the Movement Conservatives into power.  Glenn and others blame Clinton for  supporting the Defense of Marriage Act and welfare reform bills and every other nasty piece of legislation the conservatives passed.  But with a less savvy politician than Clinton, it could have been MUCH worse.  We have to remember that Gicngrich didn’t want DOMA.  He wanted a federal amendment that would enshrine inequality in the Constitution.  And there was a fairly good chance that he would have gotten it and a zillion other heartless, unfair and stingy things but for Bill Clinton.

But leave it to Glenn Greenwald and other idealistic liberals to blame Bill for getting saddled with a bunch of ruthless Republicans and still pulling off 8 years of peace and prosperity, leaving office with a surplus.  With Glenn and his ilk, no good deed goes unpunished.  Bill was a charlatan and a collaborator to Glenn.  So, if triangulating was good enough for Bill, it must be good enough for Obama.

How else would one rationalize and come to terms with what now seems like an incredibly stupid choice?  Obama promised change.  He voted for the FISA bill (Jeez, Glenn, if that didn’t slap you awake, what would?).  He campaigned with Donnie McClurkin.  Prop 8 passes in CA.  He scares young women into voting for him but makes sure that abortion is scrubbed from most Democratic candidates websites.  Now, he says he will “modify” rather than rescind the grossly unjust and offensive Bush Conscience Rule.  And he helped promote the Paulsen Bailout Bill which makes the Treasury virtually unaccountable to taxpayers while he deep sixed Hillary’s HOLC proposal,which Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional Oversight Committee of the bill, says is essential to putting the economy back on an even footing.

The thing that has *finally* gotten the stupid Obot attention is the invitation of Rick Warren to speak at the inaugural, though many of us are already incensed that the sexist frat boy pig, Jon Favreau, will be writing the inspirational speech of Hope and Change!  Obama is deliberately provoking you, you stupid Obamaphiles.  He is giving you your Sistah Souljah moment.  He is telling The Villagers that he doesn’t take orders from the lefties that supported him and that they can be comfortable that he is not going to disrupt their status quo.  Because it is The Villagers, who represent the well-connected, who could make his life a living Hell if he rocks their boat, raises their taxes, implements real change or otherwise attempts to make their lives even a smidgeon uncomfortable.  That’s what’s going on here.

Face it, Obots.  Obama is the biggest triangulator we have ever had.  We know this because he has already won the election but he acts like he’s scared of his own shadow.  He has plenty of backup in Congress and an angry constituency that is ready to tar and feather any Republican that gets in his way.  What is stopping him from promising to rescind “don’t ask, don’t tell”, the Conscience Rule and Gitmo?  What is stopping him from loudly demanding that the Treasury account for every penny right this minute?  What is stopping him from getting ahead of the game on HOLC?  He’s not in office yet but there is no downside to adjusting his rhetoric so that he can ask and demand anything he wants.  He ran like Genghis Khan but if he wants to be a real Messaiah now, there is nothing Hillary or Bush or Rove or the outgoing Republicans can do about it.  He is *not* operating in the same environment as Bill Clinton.  In fact, everything has changed.  Everything but Obama’s approach to politics.

HE seems to be stuck in the triangulating past.

Why is that Glenn?  I’ll tell you why.  It’s because Obama has been bought and paid for.  And not by you.

Can you hear us now???

Obama = Triangulator

Joe Lieberman ain’t got NUTTIN on Obama when it comes to DINO ism (Democrat In Name Only):

Obama says would include Republicans in cabinet

SUNRISE, Florida (Reuters) – U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Wednesday he would include Republicans in his Cabinet if he wins the election.

Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois, also said he had “some pretty good ideas” about people he might tap for senior government jobs, though he emphasized he is focused for now on the final days of the campaign and takes nothing for granted.

“There is a transition process — that I’m not paying attention to on a day-to-day basis — but that has been set up,” Obama told ABC News in an interview.

Obama said he “absolutely” considered it important to have Republicans in the Cabinet but he sidestepped a question on whether he would ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates to remain in his job. There has been speculation that either Obama or his Republican rival, John McCain, might ask Gates to stay on.

“I’m not going to get into details,” Obama said, but he added that national security policy, in particular, should be nonpartisan.

Other people mentioned as possible defense secretary picks in an Obama administration include former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig and Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican senator from Nebraska.

Some analysts have speculated that during the transition period between November 4 and January 20, when a successor to President George W. Bush will take office, the new president-elect would move quickly to fill key jobs such as Treasury Secretary, Defense Secretary and Secretary of State.

Some public policy experts see a need for early announcements on such appointments in light of the global financial crisis and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

“I am not going to jump the gun on this,” Obama said but he gave credit to the Bush administration for its offer to make government resources available to both candidates to begin the vetting process early.

I knew it!!  This is the main reason why I never liked Obama.  Since his proclamation of his Reagan worship, I knew that Obama was a Blue Dog Democrat.  As RD explains here, Liberalism is DEAD in the Obamacrat party.  They want to be Republicans sooooo bad, but they don’t like the “Republican” name brand and this is is why so many of our current 2008 DNC leadership love him so.   They are all DINOs each and every one of them.  No wonder Colin Powell and other Neo-Cons are salivating at an Obama presidency, they gets to war-monger and skim the books all they want!  McCain/Palin won’t let them do that, look what happened to Ted Stevens in Alaska!

Question for the Obots getting paid $7 as hour by Axelfraud to troll our site, I have a question for you and I challenge you to answer it in the comments section:  When the Obama campaign hired you guys out on your “I hate Hillary” mission, your main excuse was that “Hillary is a triangulator.”  Well, isn’t what Obama doing called “triangulating?”  To help in your homework assignment, here’s a Wikipedia definition:

Triangulation is the name given to the act of a political
candidate presenting his or her ideology as being “above” and “between”
the “left” and “right” sides (or “wings”) of a traditional (e.g. UK or
US) democratic “political spectrum”. It involves adopting for oneself
some of the ideas of one’s political opponent (or apparent opponent).
The logic behind it is that it both takes credit for the opponent’s
ideas, and insulates the triangulator from attacks on that particular
issue. Opponents of triangulation^[who?],
who believe in a fundamental “left” and “right”, consider the dynamic a
deviation from its “reality” and dismiss those that strive for it as
whimsical.

Obama started his career with people with far left leanings only because that was the way to get ahead in the Chicago Machine.  Personally, I don’t buy that Obama is a socialist, otherwise this wouldn’t be happening in his neighborhood.  Neo-Cons cook the books and make money off of war, while Obama’ and his cronies cook the books and make money off of low-income housing.  Different means but same intent.  Exploit the poor and bamboozle them into voting for you.

Voting for Obama is truly a vote for the Neo-Con Borg Collective.  So don’t feel bad when you vote against the DINO-crat, my loud and hellacious liberal principled PUMAs.  Remember this?

¡Que viva los PUMAs!

A Noisy Noise Annoys a Noisy Oyster

Masslib at Alegre’s Corner pointed me to the silly commentary on FISA on DailyKos.  Suffice it to say, Markos is uncomfortable.  He is not amused.  First, there was that stupid FISA vote yesterday where the evil villainess, Senator Clinton, voted like she always said she was going to vote- for Constitutional principle.  And Senator Obama, that evil of two lessers, did not.  Nope, he was OK with George Bush listening in on our cell phones and peering into our email.  That’s all cool and groovy for Obama.

So, what to make of this inversion?  Markos said that Clinton appears to be finished triangulating and that’s good because triangulation is bad.  And Barack Obama is triangulating because he needs to win.  And this is also good.  Because he needs to win.  Wrapping his head around this must be tiring because it is making Markos cranky:

Like all retreats, this one came with a price. Much of his veneer as a transformational politician has faded. He’s a gifted and inspirational politician, no doubt about that, and he will make a great president. But at the end of the day, he’s a politician, with all the triangulating goodness that’s become a hallmark of our presidential candidates. That has cost him some intensity of support, some bad headlines, a new avenue of attack for Republicans (even though McCain didn’t even bother showing up for the vote), and … renewed energy and sense of purpose for the ridiculous PUMAs. That last one is really fucking annoying.

I have no idea why Markos is giving us attention on his world’s biggest political billboard but, hey, whatever works.  Make some noise for us, Kos.

Update: I am watching Bush sign the FISA bill and he is thanking the members of the House and Senate, including Steny Hoyer, Jay Rockefeller, Silvestre Reyes … and “other supporters of this legislation”.  Oooo, isn’t that nice?  Bush is thanking Barack Obama for helping him fight terrism.  Wow!  When they said that Obama would have an historic candidacy, they sure weren’t kidding.  He and Bush will go down in history for this day, the day the fourth amendment took a body blow.  I hope Markos isn’t too annoyed.

Purrrrrr…