This entry was posted by Michael Reynolds, on Sunday, April 13, 2008. You can leave your response.
No shit, Michael- exactly right. I can't believe this is turning toward Atwater/Rove Country. And the media eats up these bullshit character-driven narratives- guess economic pieces demand hard thinking and no reads them anyway. Jesus Christ. We're headed toward Culture Wars '08. Have we forgotten that the 2000 election became 'Gore is an alien robot elitist'? We're not a serious people. We deserve what we get. Who are we going to vote off the Island?
A number of your complaints strike me as being the same old bullshit as well, as in "my candidate keeps shooting himself in the foot so let's complain about the press and the dumbness of the American people."
Once is a mistake, twice a coincidence but after three times a pattern begins to form. You pass off those condescending remarks about Pennsylvania as a gaffe. The only gaffe was being caught uttering them. If Clinton or McCain had said anything remotely in that vein about blacks in Philadelphia, the resulting uproar wouldn't die for a hundred days and her candidacy would have been instantly destroyed. As to McCain, how on earth you can claim that is bullshit is mystifying. True, the Clinton and Obama partisans who used it to their own advantage were bullshitting but the coverage helped bring to the fore an important issue in the election: what being in Iraq means both short and long term, or if there should be a long-term. Writing it all off as bullshit seems like an extreme reaction to me.There's no point talking to you about Jeremiah Wright and his influence over the past 20 years, I agree. Your mind is closed. Juan Williams had a different take. I imagine you will think this critique by Dan Drezner is also bullshit.
The post directly below this one is me calling attention to John McCain's nobility of character. Go three posts down and I'm claiming we may have won in Iraq. Scroll down another half dozen posts and I'm berating Keith Olbermann. But my mind is closed.Yeah, whatever, Randy.
Michael, "Your mind is closed" referred to the controversy over Jeremiah Wright.
I know how you feel man--I honestly have kinda given up trying to find substantiative coverage of the candidates, and have resorted to just not wasting my time on it.Minor dissent, though: though it falls under "gaffe" territory, McCain's Iran-supporting-Al-Quaeda comment bugs the hell out of me. It feels like a neurosurgeon about to operate on me mentioning how my thoughts reside in my heart, you sympathize?
Mark Halperin calls it freak show politics- labeling your opponent as so far out of the mainstream that he becomes a freak. Halerpin's nailed it- that's what elections have become. Thank you Lee Atwater for a wonderful legacy.
Thank you Lee Atwater for a wonderful legacy.Ah, yes, I remember it well: Lee Atwater hard at work as a 20-year-old twisting George McGovern's reputation, using skills learned as a teen-ager when he took on Barry Goldwater. Of course, he was something of a prodigy, still in diapers when he went after both Richard Nixon and Adlai Stevenson just for the sport of it in 1952. How he managed the Helen Gahagan Douglas feat before he was born we'll never know, though.
A couple of points regarding Americans' preference for "bullshit" during campaigns:One reason for "bullshit" is that whenever a candidate tells voters truths that they don't like, he's guaranteed to lose their vote. Thus when McCain told Michigan primary voters that some of their lost jobs were not coming back, they voted for Romney who promised to rebuild Michigan's manufacturing sector (without explaining how). It's safer for a candidate portray his opponent as a "freak," as already mentioned in the comments.Also, sometimes "gaffes" can be revealing about a candidate's character, or at least raise legitimate concerns about how he/she would govern. Hillary's Bosnia story would be forgotten if she had not kept repeating it after it had been proven to be grossly untrue. It suggests either that Hillary has a personality disorder or that she's adopted the communication strategy of George W. Bush. Neither bodes well for governance.Obama's condescension toward working class whites could be dismissed as momentary tactlessness, if, afterwards, he did not keep talking about them as objects. To talk about someone as an object is to reduce him, especially during an electoral campaign. Thus a cardinal rule of electoral campaigning is: Talk TO potential supporters, but not ABOUT them. If Obama really does see certain segments of the population as genuinely inferior to himself, then this could create problems for governance (think of how certain Republicans think about blacks). McCain's gaffe about Iran and Al-Quaeda, which was probably intentional and not a gaffe, is more concerning because it suggests that he contemplates expanding the war in the Middle East, no matter what the cost. McCain needs to make clear that for him, war is not the only option. His campaigning suggests otherwise. That scares me.
Randy @ 9. Apparently you're confusing dirty politics with wedge politics. Dirty politics has been around forever, as you've aptly pointed out (although I don't know why you would stop at Nixon's 48 Senate race). Wedge politics is a subset of dirty politics, to be sure, but it's not the same. The 64 LBJ commercial and the '48 Nixon race were not examples of wedge politics. It's easy to see how the untrained eye could be befuddled by such distinctions, however.
11:02 AM
No shit, Michael- exactly right. I can't believe this is turning toward Atwater/Rove Country. And the media eats up these bullshit character-driven narratives- guess economic pieces demand hard thinking and no reads them anyway.
Jesus Christ. We're headed toward Culture Wars '08. Have we forgotten that the 2000 election became 'Gore is an alien robot elitist'? We're not a serious people. We deserve what we get. Who are we going to vote off the Island?
3:18 PM
A number of your complaints strike me as being the same old bullshit as well, as in "my candidate keeps shooting himself in the foot so let's complain about the press and the dumbness of the American people."
6:49 PM
Once is a mistake, twice a coincidence but after three times a pattern begins to form. You pass off those condescending remarks about Pennsylvania as a gaffe. The only gaffe was being caught uttering them. If Clinton or McCain had said anything remotely in that vein about blacks in Philadelphia, the resulting uproar wouldn't die for a hundred days and her candidacy would have been instantly destroyed.
As to McCain, how on earth you can claim that is bullshit is mystifying. True, the Clinton and Obama partisans who used it to their own advantage were bullshitting but the coverage helped bring to the fore an important issue in the election: what being in Iraq means both short and long term, or if there should be a long-term. Writing it all off as bullshit seems like an extreme reaction to me.
There's no point talking to you about Jeremiah Wright and his influence over the past 20 years, I agree. Your mind is closed. Juan Williams had a different take. I imagine you will think this critique by Dan Drezner is also bullshit.
6:55 PM
The post directly below this one is me calling attention to John McCain's nobility of character. Go three posts down and I'm claiming we may have won in Iraq. Scroll down another half dozen posts and I'm berating Keith Olbermann. But my mind is closed.
Yeah, whatever, Randy.
7:34 PM
Michael, "Your mind is closed" referred to the controversy over Jeremiah Wright.
8:51 PM
I know how you feel man--I honestly have kinda given up trying to find substantiative coverage of the candidates, and have resorted to just not wasting my time on it.
Minor dissent, though: though it falls under "gaffe" territory, McCain's Iran-supporting-Al-Quaeda comment bugs the hell out of me. It feels like a neurosurgeon about to operate on me mentioning how my thoughts reside in my heart, you sympathize?
10:46 AM
Mark Halperin calls it freak show politics- labeling your opponent as so far out of the mainstream that he becomes a freak. Halerpin's nailed it- that's what elections have become. Thank you Lee Atwater for a wonderful legacy.
12:26 PM
Thank you Lee Atwater for a wonderful legacy.
Ah, yes, I remember it well: Lee Atwater hard at work as a 20-year-old twisting George McGovern's reputation, using skills learned as a teen-ager when he took on Barry Goldwater. Of course, he was something of a prodigy, still in diapers when he went after both Richard Nixon and Adlai Stevenson just for the sport of it in 1952. How he managed the Helen Gahagan Douglas feat before he was born we'll never know, though.
12:08 AM
A couple of points regarding Americans' preference for "bullshit" during campaigns:
One reason for "bullshit" is that whenever a candidate tells voters truths that they don't like, he's guaranteed to lose their vote. Thus when McCain told Michigan primary voters that some of their lost jobs were not coming back, they voted for Romney who promised to rebuild Michigan's manufacturing sector (without explaining how). It's safer for a candidate portray his opponent as a "freak," as already mentioned in the comments.
Also, sometimes "gaffes" can be revealing about a candidate's character, or at least raise legitimate concerns about how he/she would govern. Hillary's Bosnia story would be forgotten if she had not kept repeating it after it had been proven to be grossly untrue. It suggests either that Hillary has a personality disorder or that she's adopted the communication strategy of George W. Bush. Neither bodes well for governance.
Obama's condescension toward working class whites could be dismissed as momentary tactlessness, if, afterwards, he did not keep talking about them as objects. To talk about someone as an object is to reduce him, especially during an electoral campaign. Thus a cardinal rule of electoral campaigning is: Talk TO potential supporters, but not ABOUT them. If Obama really does see certain segments of the population as genuinely inferior to himself, then this could create problems for governance (think of how certain Republicans think about blacks).
McCain's gaffe about Iran and Al-Quaeda, which was probably intentional and not a gaffe, is more concerning because it suggests that he contemplates expanding the war in the Middle East, no matter what the cost. McCain needs to make clear that for him, war is not the only option. His campaigning suggests otherwise. That scares me.
6:37 AM
Randy @ 9. Apparently you're confusing dirty politics with wedge politics. Dirty politics has been around forever, as you've aptly pointed out (although I don't know why you would stop at Nixon's 48 Senate race). Wedge politics is a subset of dirty politics, to be sure, but it's not the same. The 64 LBJ commercial and the '48 Nixon race were not examples of wedge politics. It's easy to see how the untrained eye could be befuddled by such distinctions, however.