http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/poll-corzine-ahead-of-christie-by-42-33.php

Corzine 42%, Christie 33% in New Jersey…. how’s that Republican recovery coming along for you, fucknuts?

Good job we bookmarked your predictions, eh?

http://joshfulton.blogspot.com/2009/10/pentagon-to-use-brain-dead-cyborg.html

bagpipes, however, can SUCK IT.
But they are a natural for Rock & Roll. After all, in the time before electricty and electric guitars, if you wanted a loud obnoxious instrument that would be sure to bug your parents what better choice than the highland pipes?

And part of the reason why Dems are doing better politically is that, by and large, many DMV offices are no longer night-mares of inefficiency

Wow. We’ve got the poor man’s Thomas Friedman with us. Say, what does the cost of house-brand Mountain Dew tell you about the future of the Euro?

Brilliant, really.

No. No, there isn’t.

Sadlynauts unfamilar with BC really need to up their knowledge. When a band’s repertoire incudes “Sixteen Tons”, “People Are Strange”, “Skokiaan” and “Who Stole the Kishka?” and one listen makes it clear how and why all these songs belong together, you really do need to be giving that band more of your record-and-ticket-buying money.

My concern wouldn’t be that they “switch back”, so much as that they would stay home. I think a big chunk of Obama voters were people who said, “Holy Shit! There’s finally somebody to vote for, who actually thinks government can achieve something and who’s actually going to try to do worthwhile stuff while in office!” I’m sure I read somewhere that something like 9 million more people voted in the 2008 election than 2004, and 8 million of them voted for Obama. (Actually, I think I heard it from Troofie, so maybe it isn’t true.)

If, after being elected with a strong mandate, and strong majorities in both houses of Congress, the kinds of things people were expecting to happen don’t happen (CIA keeps torturing, lobbyists keep writing laws, large corporations keep buying legislators, and so on) I would expect those voters to just conclude that Obama is just another politician and stay home next time. At the same time, you know the disaffected conservatives, who dismissed McCain (and even Bush) as RINOs, are going to turn out in droves to drive the usurper from the throne…

Things could get ugly.

The Democrats are doing better politically because the American public is finally starting to realize that Republicans are clinically fucking insane. The GOP can longer hide that fact — hell, it’s decided to double down on the crazy, so that ain’t changing any time soon.

This, this, a thousand times this. Look, I’ll be honest: politically, I’m very much a right-libertarian. I shouldn’t be here agreeing with you guys on anything. But the modern Republican Party is so completely unhinged that I have nowhere else to go. And I don’t really see that changing either.

Here’s what I think happened. Historically, the GOP has always been an uneasy alliance of libertarians (e.g. “fiscal conservatives”) and authoritarians (e.g. “social conservatives”). Sometime between 2000 and 2008, however, the libertarian elements were jettisoned from the party’s platform. Maybe it was the deficit. Maybe it was the wars. Maybe it was gay marriage. Or maybe it was the fact that they strapped a rag over the Constitution’s mouth and poured water down its throat hundreds of times. (Metaphorically speaking — or so I assume. I haven’t been to the National Archives recently.) Regardless, once the small-government types bailed out, all that remained were the Puritans, fascists, and bigots who had been won over by the Southern strategy. Having realized this fact, the GOP politicos are now openly pandering to those segments (in other words, “doubl[ing] down on the crazy”), in the hope that there are still enough voters among them to win elections. I think they’re wrong, profoundly so, and I hope I’m right. But even if I am, their failure won’t be evident until it’s too late. They may not collapse as a party, but they won’t retake power for quite some time. Until then, enjoy your dominance. Who knows? Maybe the Dems will even pass a progressive agenda at some point. ;-)

1. The Secret Service decides what routes to take and what highways to shut down. That’s not Obama’s fault. So your bitching about it is still invalid as a criticism of Obama.

2. You wrote:

Why do people believe that government run health care will result in huge waiting periods?

I don’t know … why do people believe in Bigfoot? Or the Loch Ness monster? Or even ::gasp:: God?

I’ll tell you why: People have been told over and over and over again for years and years and years that those things are true. Thus, when the GOP spends decades screaming about how the government doesn’t work, people start to believe it, regardless of the truth.

Well, how much of that is because people have had to spend a whole day in the DMV or the social security office or even in the post office?

And part of the reason why Dems are doing better politically is that, by and large, many DMV offices are no longer night-mares of inefficiency …

Uh … wow. That’s quite possibly the dumbest non-Troofie-created thing I’ve ever read in the comments section of this blog.

The Democrats are doing better politically because the American public is finally starting to realize that Republicans are clinically fucking insane. The GOP can longer hide that fact — hell, it’s decided to double down on the crazy, so that ain’t changing any time soon.

Add in policies that Americans want, and you get the 2006 and 2008 ass kickings. It’s also why getting health care right is so damn important.

Dude, it really is simple: The only reason any gov’t program doesn’t work is because someone in gov’t decides it shouldn’t work. Not can’t, because literally thousands of programs have worked very, very well. But shouldn’t.

That’s why the Bush gang didn’t send enough forces to Iraq for either the invasion or reconstruction — they wanted to privatize a bunch of that work to their buddies in the private sector.

How’d that work out?

Yes, but that’s the “liberal media just standing up for ultra-liberal Democrats like Nancy and Harry against the mainstream, liberal Democrats”. Note that people tend to interpret whatever the media says in light of the media’s supposed liberalism. You and I know this is ridiculous, but I know otherwise educated, smart people who should know better (e.g. some of my colleagues — who are college professors!) who still think the media is “liberal”!

In my experience with people outside of left-blogostan, they routinely claim to be moderates, adopt positions on issues that are actually quite liberal but find “liberals” (which includes pretty much every Democrat as far as they are concerned) to be “too liberal”. Most people have a pretty strange combination of sophistication about political matters and a complete and utter lack of awareness about where they lie on the political spectrum and where various politicians lie on said spectrum (or is it lay? I always get this confused …).

I understand why they don’t give the route he’s taking. But when they close a freeway, they can at least make sure that people have a way to get off the freeway instead of just being stuck on it for what for all the stuck people know could be hours. They could divert people at exits, close off express lanes, etc.

Here’s the thing in general. People don’t give a flying fuck about what happens in DC or anywhere until it affects them personally. And then they get mad as hell about it. Why do people hate gummint? Why all the rhetoric? Why do people believe that government run health care will result in huge waiting periods? Well, how much of that is because people have had to spend a whole day in the DMV or the social security office or even in the post office?

And part of the reason why Dems are doing better politically is that, by and large, many DMV offices are no longer night-mares of inefficiency (offer not valid in parts of NYC), the internet has made waiting in a huge line at the post-office not so common of an occurrence, etc.

When government is competent and doesn’t inconvenience people, people like it. But when it runs around constantly generating SNAFUs (even if the GOP is in charge and generating said SNAFUs), then people believe what the GOP says about “government being part of the problem” and vote for GOoPers.

I get this, to an extent. But I think the average voter would be hard pressed to call Jon Tester or Jimm Webb or Kirstin Gillibrand “liberal”, particularly as these are the Blue Dog Democrats we’re all so angry at, and who have gotten major press for being obstructionist to Nancy and Harry.

Here’s the logic (assuming people are logical):

2006,2008: people realize that the GOP sucks major ass and finally start voting for Democrats

2009: people are upset at Democrats but still remember the GOP is batshit insane (and the GOP keeps reminding them of that)

But people’s memories are short. If the GOP stops shooting itself in the foot, people will forget how batshit crazy the GOP is. And, if the Democrats, e.g., pass a health care “reform” bill that mandates everybody buy health insurance and does nothing to really control costs, then all people will remember is “Democrats voted for a major give-away for the insurance companies and the GOP opposed it” (and not even remember the GOP’s role in crafting the sucky compromise bill) and then be more likely to vote for the GOP (because the GOP is “calling it like it is by saying how much government screws things up”).

we ran centrist candidates, not liberals

As far as many people are concerned, anybody to the left of Holy Joe is a liberal. Brand Democrat is brand liberal. Whether our candidates were liberals or ran as such is somewhat irrelevant. Decades of “even the liberal media thinks [bland centrist Democrat X] is a shrill liberal” means that a vote for Democrats is a vote for liberalism.

You do have a point, though. In some states brand liberal is not a good brand and people voted for Dems in spite of “all Dems are liberal” not because of it. But again what people want is results. If we believe liberalism will produce good results, then we should be pushing the Dems to be more liberal. A quasi-red-state, self-proclaimed “centrist” swing voter is not going to vote for a Dem because “well, that Dem is not too liberal” but vote for a Dem “in spite of the fact that she’s liberal because — well, her votes have been for things that make my life better and against things that make my life worse”.

So, if the Dems embrace liberalism, it makes people’s lives better, people will continue to vote Dem even if they claim to be “centrists”. OTOH, if the Dems screw things up (e.g. by making compromises with the GOP, which then goes and doesn’t even support the compromises — and these compromises turn out to be disasters) and generally are incompetent, people will say “these Dems claim government is the solution to every problem, but look at how FUBAR they’ve made things — maybe the GOP is right and government is the problem” and vote GOP.

At the very least, people know that they are “pragmatic” and “non-ideological” and they know that we know that. So if Dems tack too centrist and are too willing to compromise it just comes off with voters saying to themselves “if Dem [X] thinks he’ll get my vote — when he knows that I vote for the ‘best candidate’ independent of ideology — by compromising, then that means he thinks that the best approach is to compromise — and if even the liberal Dem. [X] doesn’t believe in liberalism, why should I?”.

See, here’s the inconsistency: we ran centrist candidates, not liberals. If we push the Dems to be more liberal, that’s a sure fire way to lose elections in this environment (some states excluded, of course, and now I’d add that more states can appear on the exclusion list).

Granted, but there’s still a circular logic in that appraisal that makes little sense, even allowing for the fact that people are inconsistent. There has to be some logic that would have them vote Democratic for the two past elections, but then suddenly switch back for no apparent reason (remember, the Republican party has actually lost both adherents and independent support in just this past year, despite the economy and Obama’s perceived handling of that).

For example, why was I stuck on Rt. 80 for 20+ minutes last night when the Presidential motorcade went through? Couldn’t they have arranged things so that if they were going to close a major artery down that people would have some notice or at least be diverted off of the freeway before hand?

You’re fucking kidding me, right? The biggest bitch you have about Obama is that you were … 20 minutes late? Really?

Don’t get me wrong — I agree that Democrats should start acting like liberals and all, and that if they don’t get shit done they’ll be consequences.

But arguing about traffic is pretty fucking absurd, and means … nothing. It happens to every city the President visits (and they don’t exactly give out the route he’s taking — I’ll let you do the math as to why).

Pardon me for sounding like a concern troll here …

Too late!

… but let’s stop with the “raw-raw Dems are gonna win” (the Tinkerbell strategy is so GOP anyway) …

As soon as I see anyone doing that, I’ll start to worry. Since no one actually is, however, I won’t.

and start thinking about how to push the Democrats to be the liberals the American people elected them to be.

I’ve been trying that for years. But, sadly, it ain’t gonna happen on a widespread scale until progressives start having the financial clout to toss around that the mushy-middle and center-right does.

There aren’t many people who have to live with such an obvious discrepancy between his own regard for his worth and the public’s unwillingness to accept his greatness. He can only be in a lot of pain.

Think of the people you know who have so badly underperformed on their own self-opinion. Do they seem like a happy lot to you? Seriously, I feel pretty sorry for Breitbart, and Sadly, No! picking on him seems like so much piling-on given the way he’s been thoroughly ignored by everyone else.

bagpipes, however, can SUCK IT.

Bon Scott disagrees.

Why? Because the Dems. simply are not living up to what we would imagine Dems. would do. More importantly, the Dems in charge are not particularly competent nor good at playing the political game.

I’ll give you that last point, but that first one is inconsistent: either the country supports the Democratic platform (admittedly, more centrist than we’d like) and so would vote for it again if they maintain it, or we got lucky the past two elections due to anger at Republicans, so any ideological position we take would be a losing proposition.

I’m not sure I understand the point.