4:1 against. Hillary doesn't need him, she's unlikely to feel the need for a unity ticket or some such bullshit, and even if she does he wouldn't accept.
4:1? I can't think of many Democrats I'd put that high.
1000-1 against. Hillary can't pick a pro-life VP.
Kasich is too pro-forced gestation for VP in the d party.
On the other hand, it would give Chris Matthews a boner so enormous that he would probably have a stroke. So not entirely negative.
I'm not too conversant with oddsmaking, I suppose.
I hope somebody writes a hot take that Clinton will pick a male VP candidate to bring in man-votes.
If Clinton were inclined to have an anti-Trump "unity ticket", then Sandoval is the obvious play.
Of course the last time someone tried such a strategy we ended up with the worst president in american history retroactively losing the Civil War.
To be fair, in that case we were in the midst of a literal civil war.
Shoulda just gone with a selfie of yourself masturbating. Woulda been less embarrassing.
13 to OP.
13 to both Hillary Clinton and John Kasich.
Clinton will nominate Trump, Trump will nominate Clinton. Democracy over.
Who does Hillary pick as VP anyway? Joe Biden, on the grounds he's done a pretty good job so far?
I've heard Julian Castro and Tom Perez listed as probable options.
You can see how those might be particularly good choices against Trump.
Betting markets have Julian Castro as much more likely than anyone else. Deval Patrick, Cory Booker, Tim Kaine, Martin O'Malley, Brian Schweizer, and John Hickenloper are other reasonable options. Personally I think it will either be a young minority man or Tim Kaine.
Betting markets have Julian Castro as much more likely than anyone else.
Here's oddschecker on the democratic VP.
If she's going to nominate a Republican, it should be Chris Christie. He's flexible on abortion, and brings in that crucial Giant Asshole vote.
Although, really most of the Giant Assholes are going to vote for Trump. The best Christie could do would be to shave a chunk off of Trumps margin with the demographic.
Besides, Christie's Trumps button man now.
Fucking apostrophes, how do they work?
Especially difficult to keep straight in your Arrakeen environment.
I think Christie would look great as Clinton's captive.
Tom Vilsack is the only one whose childhood house is walkable my house. Well, him and Kasich if you have a whole morning.
30 In a gold bikini like Princess Leia to Clinton's Jabba the Hutt.*
*That wasn't sexist, was it?
I think the odds are about as good as her picking Chris-Matthews-But-On-Fire as her running mate, though that might just be wishful thinking on my part.
Forgot about abortion.
Nice male privilege, bro.
Had the occasion to mention ajay's brilliant Nixoniad to some old B&T regulars on the twitters dot com.
Mean that for the other thread...
22: No way in hell it's Deval Patrick. HRC is vulnerable enough on her ties to high finance without picking a Veep who works for Bain Capital. I was kind of stunned when Deval took that job, because if not for that, he would have been such an obvious choice to become VP and heir apparent to the presidency.
A hand in the bird is worth two in the bush.
If it were Tom Perez, I would plotz. I'm sure people would get right on the job of explaining that he's a corporate stooge playing a deep game.
Of course, that assumes that Clinton would figure that out in time, and that kind of mistake seems pretty consistent with what I've seen of her.
I think her best bet is to pick someone who is (1) a minority, and preferably one of the ones currently under Trumptack, (2) young, and (3), ideally but unlikely, a strong progressive. The first is valuable mainly because it would reinforce the image of the Democrats as the party for not-racists, if only by making sure that the right wing keeps up its openly racist freakout and doesn't get to quiet down about it for the general election. The second is because, well, she's an older candidate and as a woman that isn't as likely to get ignored. And the third is because I think that the perception of her as an untrustworthy/establishment candidate (even if she does keep running on a progressive sounding platform) could really hurt her in the general.
Julian Castro has been talked about as a VP pick for years now, but I'm not convinced he'd be a great choice overall. His main appeal seems to me to be that, well, he's been talked about as a VP candidate for years now. And I'm not convinced there's enough in addition to that to make him a really good pick.
Why the hell should Clinton pick a Republican for VP? She's going to have enough trouble getting the Democratic voters to turn out anyway without having a laugh at their expense. OTOH, it's nice to see that Ogged has lost none of his trolling skills over the years.
Because her brian trust thinks there are votes, money, and influence to be had in the nevertrump movement.
Why the hell should Clinton pick a Republican for VP?
Here's the serious thought: there are going to be a non-trivial number of Republicans who really don't want to vote for Trump, but can't see themselves voting for a Republican. A Republican(ish) VP could make it easier for those people to vote for Hillary, without costing her too much, given that Democrats will turn out to vote against Trump regardless.
Is that all true? Dunno. But plausible.
Sorry, can't see themselves voting for a Democrat.
Being serious, I think Clinton loses more votes than she gains if she taps a Republican as her veep.
(Former Montana Gov. Schweitzer -- mentioned above, yet less likely to be the VP nominee than Gov. Kasich -- did exactly this, picking a Republican for lt. gov. It worked in 2004.)
I guess she could find an aggressively pro-choice Republican -- a vocal advocate of a woman's right to choose -- but I think she'd have more luck finding a unicorn.
I'm trying to figure out if 48 means you think this is realistic idea, Charley. I can't imagine you do. But then again, I keep being surprised that Megan think that California is a bellwether for the nation.
47 I think that's right, but of course one has to weigh the geography of votes lost and won. Maybe it's worth losing 200,000 votes in California to gain 50,000 in Ohio.
I still think it's a bad idea. I also think it's just the sort of bad idea that the sort of people she has working for her are thinking about right now.
I was thinking that the 2004 reference would be the tip-off, VW.
(Speaking of people working for her, I think the Sanders fans here have underestimated the beneficial impact of 3 men campaigning for HRC in the fall: Sanders, Clinton, Obama.)
If you're going to troll stupid, troll big: Clinton/Romney '16.
it's just the sort of bad idea that the sort of people she has working for her are thinking about right now
I fear you're right. But I can't imagine they're that stupid. Oh wait, I can, actually.
Kasich is really no less crazy than Trump or Cruz or anyone else in the shitshow field we just witnessed in their Primaries. He just occasionally tosses out the odd "moderate" sound-bite to keep people guessing; really, all of his "moderate" positions are counterbalanced by equally bugfuck wingnut positions. It will be a very bad sign for Democratic credibility if they ever let someone like him near them.
That odds site has the same odds of 16:1 for Bernie being nominated for president as for Hillary being nominated for VP. There's got to be some way to arbitrage that.
Kasich being for Medicaid expansion is a real distinction from the rest of the pack, but he's certainly disqualified by the rest of his positions,agreed there.
Kasich also isn't entirely in the pocket of the military-industrial complex. He made his bones early in his career by staking out a strong position against the B-2 (he worked with a liberal Democrat; I forget who). Admittedly, the B-1 was assembled partly in Ohio, but still.
That sounded like a defense of Kasich. And because MHPH is here, I should quickly note that it wasn't! Kasich is absolutely awful -- just marginally less awful than, say, Ted Cruz.
That odds site has the same odds of 16:1 for Bernie being nominated for president as for Hillary being nominated for VP. There's got to be some way to arbitrage that.
You can't really arbitrage those bets, since they don't let you take either side of the bet. All you can do is avoid the worse bet with extra determination.
If you pretend that in addition to not caring about blowing up the budget with enormous 1%-er tax cuts, Democrats additionally don't care about right-to-work or abortion or birthright citizenship, I guess you can make a chance that Clinton/Kasich will happen in this timeline and not on Earth-616.
Republicans pre-surrendering to Trump at the convention.
I can't find the exact comments, but I'm pretty sure I predicted this.
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The president of his college is a dick, but Taurean Prince of Baylor, wins explainer of the year.
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I think she'd have more luck finding a unicorn.
She should totally nominate a unicorn. Preferably one that shits rainbows. I'd vote for that in a heartbeat.
Oh motherfucking goddammit, I just refreshed this window instead of another one and lost 400 words or something.
Fuck it. It was a comment so insightful, so brilliantly argued that Von Wafer, Roberto Tigre, and MHPH would have joined together to hail me philosopher-king, but you'll all just have to infer it.
51: I also think it's just the sort of bad idea that the sort of people she has working for her are thinking about right now.
Oh come on.
Alright, the comment in brief, due to 69:
They absolutely should at least be thinking about it, just like the army should have a plan for invading Canada. They shouldn't do it, and they shouldn't be discussing it at top levels, but some midlevel staffer should be looking into it: is there a plausible Republican who could up the odds of winning? In the event, I think she's going to crush Trump, so this would be a squandered opportunity, but if it were shaping up to be a 50/50 election, then any action to fight Trump would be justified.
67
You know, a unicorn is also a bi-woman willing to have a threesome with a straight couple. Bill Clinton would probably be super into that VP pick.
70
It would be a fantastic way to lose the left, aka every American under 35. If there's anything that tamps down "Hillary is a sekrit Republican they're all the same" narrative from the more annoying Bernie supporters, it's picking an actual Republican.
a unicorn is also a bi-woman willing to have a threesome with a straight couple
Learned something.
69 was chiefly reacting to the notion that people really do, apparently, feel that Clinton means absolutely nothing she says on the campaign trail. I find that stunning, and frankly insulting.
Meanwhile, this is a worthwhile piece reminding us that Republican economic policy proposals are complete crap, and need to be called out.
Along the way there:
John Kasich's tax plan includes cutting the top marginal rate by more than ten percent along with a similar cut to the rates on capital gains and business taxes. Even considering Kasich's appetite for Social Security cuts, his plan must rely on the same supply-side voodoo that Kansas has so thoroughly discredited.
On Kasich's economic plan. You really think Clinton would name this guy as her VP? You think she's that irrational or craven or power hungry -- or whatever you think her motivation might be?
Pretty sure that she'll go with Lloyd Blankfein or Henry Kissinger as VP, based on what I've heard.
Kissinger couldn't be preznit tho.
And visiting foreign states might be awkward too.
They absolutely should at least be thinking about it, just like the army should have a plan for invading Canada. They shouldn't do it . . .
It would be a fantastic way to lose the left, aka every American under 35.
Amusingly, I was going to say the same thing as JRoth. I think it's a terrible idea, and I think they should make sure not to put anything on paper. But, yeah, it's worth at least talking through some crazy scenarios just for the sake of mentally gaming them out.
But I agree with almost everyone in this thread that I'd be shocked if it was something they were seriously considering.
75 I'm not aware of Clinton saying on the campaign trail that under no circumstances would she suggest a moderate Republican for VP so as to peel off a portion of Republican moderates, so I don't think I'm saying her advisers would intentionally make her a liar.
It's a bad idea, but in what way is it a demonstration that she doesn't mean what she says? Presumably she'd make the VP pledge to support the program . . .
So who's the best 45-55 year old rep for Sanders style "socialism"?
it's worth at least talking through some crazy scenarios just for the sake of mentally gaming them out.
Honestly, I don't agree. JRoth already violated the analogy ban, so I'll go ahead: sure, I might mentally game out the possibility that I might have to eat my children (if I had them) -- because you never know! But really, I wouldn't do that.
What crazy scenario would call for naming Kasich as VP? Honest question.
74: That she wasn't a real bisexual?
83: Presumably she'd make the VP pledge to support the program . . .
Oh. Well, that's fine then. Pledges are solid gold.
Why are we even considering this again? It's absolutely idiotic, unnecessary, and basically suicide. I guess I can consider myself trolled.
84: Ellison? A Muslim VP wouldn't be quite as useful as a latino one as far as the target of the right wing freakout, but it would certainly inspire a pretty massive one.
I haven't been following Sanders' movement closely enough to have my own answer to 84, at all. If HRC calls Sanders in mid June, after the race is decided, tells him she wants a unity ticket, and would like him to recommend someone between 45 and 55 with a national reputation, who's he got?
88 I'm not looking for a freakout, I'm looking for a standard bearer into the next 3 cycles.
Does anybody have any questions for white working class people in a red state? Ask now before I go to the grocery store.
Not that I think he would make a good running mate. I just trying to think of anybody with a national profile at all.
No idea, but I would look through these. Of course, Sanders didn't get as many endorsements because Clinton had the default for so long, and she might be pissed at these people.
Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii, part Samoan, Army Major, practicing Hindi, 35 looks exciting as fuck. (Not sexually)
Actually, I like Sherrod Brown a lot, but it would mean letting Kasich appoint a Senate seat, so that's no good.
Does anybody have any questions for white working class people in a red state?
Gosh. Um. How do you feel about Donald Trump?
This Kos piece lists some candidates for Congress who are more or less aligned with Sanders. I'm not sure any of them has a national reputation except maybe Kamala Harris (and Feingold, of course, but he's more needed in the Senate).
Again, not sexually, but I think I'm in love with her as am ideal candidate. Probably just ignorance. Is she too young?
Opposed DOMA after a conversion
Opposed Obama's war in Syria
Strongly opposes TPP
Sierra club endorsement
Probably way too left for Clinton, but unity was the point?
Fuck old farts like Brown.
Gabbard is an Islamophobe and her dad is an anti-gay politician associated with a Hawaiian Krishna fringe group. I think she quite plausibly has a future in national politics, but it's a reasonably complex question.
First Krishna follower on a national party ticket since Reconstruction.
92: The point of 89 I thought was creating a national profile, building the bench.
95: Apo was first, so I'll ask his question.
Zephyr Teachout might be a good choice, actually.
Who are the progressive Governors out there?
103: I still have old-fashioned ideas that the VP should help bring a state and well, as someone from flyover country who understands that the American Northeast is a decaying dying mass of ruins...
Interesting things about the Sanders endorsement list in 93
The economists, sociologists list is pretty rich with names I know and like...
...the Hollywood and artist writer lists is very slim and woebegone...
...sure, Clinton opposes TPP. What a laugh.
89: Anyone that matches the description in 84 is going to give you a Republican freakout. Actually almost anyone at all will - the only question is whether it will be a useful one.
Who are the progressive Governors out there?
It's telling that the list of Sanders endorsers in 93 has no governors on it.
Why would she pick a lefty? Are Sanders' supporters going to stay home with Trump on the ballot? A white dude with working-class credibility seems like the obvious play. What are the swing states this year? Same as usual?
Aiken:
Secretary Clinton attacked Bernie as not being present and supportive during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 70s. Never mind the photographic evidence of him being arrested in Chicago while protesting in support of equal rights.
I should go look for the piece I read that explains the Lewis thing and other differences between Nortern and Southern Blacks. For Southern Blacks voting rights are overwhelmingly important, and Sanders work in Chicago would not impress.
Here it is Daily Kos diary. Recommended, lots of good info on confrontational vs organizational activists for instance
6) VOTING RIGHTS AND DEFENDING THEM ARE HUGE ISSUES TO BLACK VOTERSTo black voters this means going into places like South Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama where team blue isn't going to win statewide anytime soon, and fighting to defend black's voting rights. 55% of blacks still live in the South, the vast majority of black elected official still come from the South. "Writing off" Red States and specifically the South (including states Democrats can't win statewide) means writing off the majority of black people. That "writing off" includes everything from large numbers of extended family members to the majority of the Congressional Black Caucus. Floating this idea is like floating a lead balloon to the majority of black voters.
Going against Trump, you want someone who can get under his skin over and over again. Al Franken probably can do that better than anybody in American politics.
The link in 112 is really good.
It is. Thanks Bob, and thanks teo for highlighting it. Worth reading.
82
They should give it some thought, just in the off-chance Trump is leading in the polls in late July*. The Republicans have their convention first, so she will know who their nominees are before she has to make her pick.
I mean, yeah it's crazy, but this whole year has been crazy so at least consider the possibility she will need one weird trick to win.
* Actually I think a more likely possibility is that Trump is nominated and he says "Are you people INSANE? This was supposed to be a YUGE JOKE!" and stalks off the stage.**
** That or either kind of unicorn becomes his VP nominee.
I do think that it's nice that the Republicans have their convention first because knowing the pair she'll be running against adds a lot of useful tactical information - and enough that aside from vetting a big range of candidates they're probably better of waiting to see who they're up against before thinking too hard about who to pick.
That said, if she did choose a Republican candidate, and even a pretty moderate one, I would have an extremely hard time voting for her. I don't mean in some kind of rational-evaluation sense: "Not-Republican-President" trumps almost any considerations, and "Not-Trump-Presidency" puts it even further. I mean in the literal "it would be very difficult to do even if I got very drunk first" way.
I look forward to the "Barely legal running mates" series on MSNBC.
109, I'm not looking to avoid a Republican partisan freakout either. Electability is a big deal, obviously, but the point of the selection has to be way more than the election. Presidents don't always complete their terms, and this is a shot at building up someone who can carry the Sanders banner. It's more than a little telling that there's no obvious candidate; Sanders knows he needs a movement, but so far, it really is just a campaign. Ok, if he's not going to get the nomination, then isn't his best play a VP nomination for someone who can carry his flag?
111 Presidents don't always complete terms, and she certainly wouldn't want someone her opponents prefer in the number 2 seat. The future will be lefter than the present, which is lefter than the 90s. She should be promoting someone who will expand and advance her legacy. Lots of good reasons, if she can win. My worry about her all along is too much of that 90s triangulation has too much appeal to her people. Can she get out of it? Sanders is helping her, and will do in the fall. Maybe he can help her on the running mate question as well.
It'll be an interesting litmus test anyhow.
A white dude with working-class credibility
Terry McAuliffe! Everybody likes him!
Alan Grayson? He's 58, national profile. Hate to say it, but I think white male is probably the way she has to go. Two women running wouldn't do, and a (visibly) minority male running mate will have them labelled the "affirmative action ticket."
I like it too much. If she pick Alan Grayson I have a hard time not rooting for her to have a stroke.
OT: Is a bottle of Mogen David that was opened a year ago still drinkable? Asking for a friend.
Not noticeably worse than a freshly opened bottle of Mogen David.
Alan Grayson is currently embroiled in a massive ethics scandal. Not a good choice for VP.
125, 130 - Right, if Deval Patrick is out because he's working for Bain, I think you have to disallow a sitting Congressman who was running a hedge fund and advertising it as, "Hey, here's a hedge fund run by a sitting Congressman!"
Huh, I didn't know. New job is keeping me too busy to keep up with the news.
I wonder if I should make a LOVE/TORCH SONG MIX. Mostly I wonder this because I just listened back-to-back to Marc Blitzstein's "In Twos" and Diamanda Galás doing "My World Is Empty Without You".
It's not really clear that I'd be able to do that at all effectively.
133: Those are both so good and once I have space and time I'll test your advice that they're good together.
I think the neb take on the concept would probably be quite intriguing.
(Having said that. Don't know that I'm feeling that particular Galás track, admittedly; she seems to be most effective with much more abstract and deliberately weird material where she can use her Personal Eeriness to the fullest effect. Her attempts at soul or jazz standards sound more like comically bombastic noodling.)
(That other track is good, though.)
It does not reflect well on the Obama administration's management of the Democratic farm system that there are not a ton of great choices to pick from here.
I mean really: Rahm Emanuel - your next Vice President.
I can no longer tell what thread is the general primary discussion thread. (I assume this is deliberate: since the strategy of quarantining the primary discussion did nothing to kill it, mods are now shifting to a "divide and conquer" strategy. We'll see if this is any more successful. But I digress.)
I know we've discussed general anti-Sanders bias in the media but have we covered this particular scandal? (Details through the links, but the NYT's editors aggressively edited an article to downplay Sanders' legislative accomplishments (and cast them in a negative light generally). Which we all expect, except they mistakenly did it after the article had already been published and widely shared, including by Sanders' campaign itself.)
Yeah, I thought that was kind of amazing. I mean, one could assume it was just a big fuck-up, which, ok, fuck-ups happen. But then the editors going on to defend the fuck-up, instead of saying "whoops, our bad," makes me wonder if there was something more going on behind the scenes.
I don't think there's anything that needs explanation. The Times has been strongly pro-Hillary as against Sanders; the original positive story made it out without being noticed; then it got noticed and they don't have a policy preventing them from editing after online publication.
142; Also Dean Baquet's term has been a freaking disaster for political coverage overall in the newsroom (held quite separate from the editorial page). Public editor Margaret Sullivan (who has been better than previous folks in that position but who is leaving) weighed on this one here and pretty much implied the same. So yeas, thos one was a biased hot mess. But I think not to the level of the damage they did to Clinton with several of their utterly wrong* Clinton email stories which they likewise corrected late without adequate notice (Sullivan agreed with my position on at least one of them but not on the original). So the nature of their bias is complicated.
I think they greater disservice that the Times and other mainstream press did to Sanders was in almost utterly ignoring him for a long, long time.At one point as late as early fall I think airtime devoted to the brief speculation on Romney getting into the race, as well as the Biden courting were far ahead of Bernies' total coverage time on network news.
*It turns out the A former top aide of Chuck Grassley leads up the division of the State Dept. doing the investigation. There has been increasing scrutiny of their role in the BS.
One of the "benefits" of being a member of a totally intellectually and morally dishonest party is that you can do great damage in the non-elective parts of government. See Repub judges, the guys in the DOJ who escalated the New Black Panther Party probe (which feckless racist Megyn Kelly* exploited mercilessly), and way back the whole Whitewater thing pretty much conjured up by L. Jean Lewis in the RTC.
I'm pretty sure their Clinton love right now is purely the the result of their discovering that at this point literally every other possible president in 2017 would cheerfully tell them and the interests they/their editors/etc. represent to go fuck themselves, while laughing at the idea of benefiting them at the expense of other people. (Yes yes brokered convention, etc. And they're certainly dreaming of that. But...)
138 It's not their job. It's your job.
But yes, this particular Times story was egregious and revealing.
144: Carlson is pretty much the best that the NYT is ever going to do for a public editor, but this column was a disappointment. The only problem that she seriously addresses is the fact that the editing was done publicly. She doesn't deal with the content of the editing in any serious way. (Sure, she gets assurances that the edit wasn't mandated directly by the Clinton campaign, but that's it.)
She adds an apologetic update at the bottom, and in the last sentence finally recognizes the actual problem:
blockquoteI would also observe that the "context" added here looked a lot like plain-old opinion to this reader, and quite a few others./blockquote
Oops. If you hadn't guessed, the final sentence was supposed to be a blockquote.
comically bombastic noodling
I'm going on nothing but memory since I still haven't had a chance to listen to anything, but this song strikes me as less of that than, say, "I Put a Spell on You" or one of her other covers. I think she was deliberately trying to subvert the usual emotional impact of the song (again, possibly misremembering from half my lifetime ago) while also amplifying it. I'm not disagreeing with the comically bombastic noodling, I guess, just saying I think it's intentional.
I did enjoy an earlier bit where she basically implies that the reporter's opinion was "Look it's clearly politically motivated bullshit from the editors and I've got nothing to do with it but also I want to have a job so my public statement is that it's no big deal and totally normal."
The executive editor, Dean Baquet, also responded to Erik Wemple of The Washington Post on Tuesday night, and Ms. Steinhauer responded to the Rolling Stone piece. Both said, in essence, that the changes were routine efforts to add context to an evolving story.
Ms. Steinhauer, in a response to my email, suggested that I speak to editors because "it was an editing decision."But yeah it was pretty clear from the piece that she thought what they did was a whole lot of bullshit, but sees her job as defending the New York Times as much as she can whenever they really fuck up (and people catch them).
On the R side it's Fiorina for trump VP, right? He pretty much has to pick a woman if he wants to win, she maintains the outsider, run it like a business theme, but she's also a failed exec so won't overshadow him with actual success.
136.2: I like her takes on "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" and, well, that tune, but for the most part I agree.
(Sure, she gets assurances that the edit wasn't mandated directly by the Clinton campaign, but that's it.)
This was a really bad place to stop investigating/writing because obviously something doesn't have to be directly, specifically at the behest of the Clinton campaign to be unduly influenced by undue deference to it—all that "meddling priest" stuff.
With Trump who the hell knows. He has good political insight so I'm guessing he'll pick someone useful rather than counterproductive. But 'useful' for him isn't 'useful' in the establishment politics sense. If he does pick a woman it's as likely to be, I dunno, Ingraham or something.
152.last: but sees her job as defending the New York Times as much as she can whenever they really fuck up (and people catch them).
As noted above, she is actually much better (and less defensive) than Okrent and whatever clown(s)* followed him on that score. But, yes, it seems that delving into actual political bias on the part of the Times itself or its sources is a brudge to far for her. For instance in her piece on the Times fuck up on the San Bernadino social media posting story she basically lets the following howler stand on its own:
Mr. Baquet rejected the idea that the sources had a political agenda that caused them to plant falsehoods. "There's no reason to think that's the case," he said.Sure, when as she notes the two authors were th same as the most egregious Clinton email fuck-up, and in both cases it is clear that their sources are Republican operatives (or sympathizer/moles). I'm sure if were her friend and had a beer with her she'd admit she knows that Purdy and Baquet are bullshitting her.
*Especially the one dude (Clark Hoyt) who (in an email not a column at least) defended the Times' horrific reporting on the ACORN stuff by writing:
The story says O'Keefe dressed up as a pimp and trained his hidden camera on Acorn counselors. It does not say he did those two things at the same time.An excuse fit for a 8-year old.
It makes sense, I guess. "We screwed up bad" is one kind of omission, but for a paper that does its level best to assume a pose of objective trustworthiness without any general political views (all evidence to the contrary) "The editors have a strong political agenda they were trying to push" is an entirely different kind. Covering over things that are almost certainly the second with admissions of the first is probably fairly effective, honestly.
113: Going against Trump, you want someone who can get under his skin over and over again. Al Franken probably can do that better than anybody in American politics.
This is an interesting point, and I agree: I suspect the most effective weapon against Trump is clear-eyed debunking along with gentle eye-rolling. Of course Franken doesn't bring with him any swing state that might otherwise be unattainable for Sanders -- I can't think off-hand of anyone who would -- but I haven't thought very hard about it, since I doubt Sanders will be the nominee.
This reminds me, though, regarding the other discussion about Kasich as a possible Clinton VP pick: I reflected while showering this morning on just what a Vice Presidential debate would look like in that case. Would the idea be that Kasich would strongly advocate Clintonian positions directly opposed to those he's been espousing on the campaign trail? How on earth would that work?
My sense is that presidential and vice presidential debates, once candidates are settled on, get a hell of a lot of viewers. I would adore seeing Al Franken debate, say, Carly Fiorina. The point, echoing Apo's, is that it's helpful to think not in terms of garnering the support of various demographics, but in terms of who can deliver the rhetorical goods.
The traditional wisdom (which I have agreed with) is that your VP pick either hurts you or makes no difference, so just make it somebody safe. But for a nominee like Trump coming from outside of politics altogether, I suspect that's no longer applicable.
If he really wanted to throw a narrative curveball, he'd pick Mia Love.
I'm remembering how Joe Biden made a mockery of Paul Ryan in the 2012 VP debate regarding the latter's tax plan. Shaking his head, saying "Not mathematically possible."
That debate really was an amazing moment: you could see Ryan going from a strong asset (because the press idolized him) into a drag on the ticket right there in real time.
The conservative press didn't see it that way: Biden was rudely laughing at Ryan, you see. So disrespectful and un(vice)presidential of him, just like that uppity actual presidential candidate himself, snob that he is, laughing at people the way he does all the time.
I give even odds that Trump's veep pick will either be Jim Webb* or Jesse Ventura.
* If Webb is morally flexible enough.
163: It was also one of the moments that made it clear how little the conservative press' beliefs were coming to matter outside their own bubble.
165: You think that that VP debate actually lost Mitt Romney votes in the general election? I don't.
Jesse Venture is an awesome, awesome, I tell you, pick.
Carl Weathers should get the nod. He's never even been a governor.
166 I think everything gets jumbled in. Cheney was an asset in a way that neither Quayle or Palin were. I doubt either Biden or Gore added much if anything.
Then again the polling/research is really misleading on this sort of thing. If only half a percent of the people voting in Florida cared about Cheney, you'd say that 99.5% of people didn't give a shit about the VP, and yet Cheney won the damn election.
My theory is the Christy must have been promised the VP position and believes that if he were VP he could be the real person in charge, like Cheney in the Bush White House, but more so. It is a little scary, because I can imagine that ticket attracting establishment Republican support. "Oh, it's ok that there is clown at the top of the ticket. The real guy is someone we can work with."
I think it would take a promise like that for Christy to endure such humiliation from Trump.
Heaven only knows if Christy could actually consolidate behind the scenes power like that, though.
Alternate VP choice for Trump: The Nuge.
Some senior establishment figure does seem like the best choice for Trump, for exactly 171's reasons. Dump some neo-con in there and a lot of the more freaked out parts of the Republican establishment (and press commentators like Brooks or Matthews or whoever) will feel a bit more reassured about foreign policy* and assume that as far as the domestic stuff goes he's not going to screw over the wealthy so who cares about the rest.
*I know, but these aren't people with a firm grasp on reality anyway.
Iron Shiek is ineligible as someone born in Iran, but Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Sgt. Slaughter would both be yuuge, very classy, very smart choices.
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Speaking of the NYT, I just saw this article, "As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops" and, given that I'm sympathetic, it drove me slightly crazy -- in ways that seem related to the discussion above about the blindspots of the times.
A new study from researchers at Cornell University found that the difference between the occupations and industries in which men and women work has recently become the single largest cause of the gender pay gap, accounting for more than half of it. In fact, another study shows, when women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines -- for the very same jobs that more men were doing before.
Okay, that makes sense, let's see what examples they have.
A striking example is to be found in the field of recreation -- working in parks or leading camps -- which went from predominantly male to female from 1950 to 2000. Median hourly wages in this field declined 57 percentage points, accounting for the change in the value of the dollar, according to a complex formula used by Professor Levanon. The job of ticket agent also went from mainly male to female during this period, and wages dropped 43 percentage points.
The same thing happened when women in large numbers became designers (wages fell 34 percentage points), housekeepers (wages fell 21 percentage points) and biologists (wages fell 18 percentage points). The reverse was true when a job attracted more men. Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige.
Uhhh. In at least a couple of cases there, I'd wonder about the direction of causality -- did the job shift to being female and then the wages drop, or did wages drop and then the gender shifted. In the case of computer programming, I don't think the gender shift explains the rise in pay and prestige.
[OTOH, biologists and designers are good examples]
But I also feel like there are larger systemic forces at play:
Women have moved into historically male jobs much more in white-collar fields than in blue-collar ones. Yet the gender pay gap is largest in higher-paying white-collar jobs, Ms. Blau and Mr. Kahn found. One reason for this may be that these jobs demand longer and less flexible hours, and research has shown that workers are disproportionately penalized for wanting flexibility.
...
Yes, women sometimes voluntarily choose lower-paying occupations because they are drawn to work that happens to pay less, like caregiving or nonprofit jobs, or because they want less demanding jobs because they have more family responsibilities outside of work. But many social scientists say there are other factors that are often hard to quantify, like gender bias and social pressure, that bring down wages for women's work.
*headdesk*
To be fair, the Times does acknowledge the issue, but what a frustrating, patronizing way to do it. And, most importantly, the article as a whole seems to me like it points in the wrong direction -- if you're trying to identify the problem that needs to be fixed.
If the problem is that predominantly-female professions are undervalued than the way to fix that is to campaign for fairness, and for higher pay for those job categories. If the problem is that women are, "disproportionately penalized for wanting flexibility" then the solution is to try to figure out how to allow more flexibility.
Both are serious issues, and I don't want to say that we shouldn't pay attention to the ways in which women's work gets undervalued, I just think the Times does a poor job of framing it.
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Woah, the Iron Sheik is 74. He was already in his 40s when he was a wrestling star.
did the job shift to being female and then the wages drop, or did wages drop and then the gender shifted.
Guess which I'd say? Let me point you to the literature.
Not only are the ruling ideas the ideas of the ruling class, but the ruling ideas serve capital and accumulation.
This doesn't make feminism a diabolical plot to decrease wages, rationalize domestic production and social reproduction, manage a larger and more compliant workforce.
Nor is feminism bad because it is a creature (and creator) of capitalist logic, anymore than liberalism, social democracy, welfare statism, unionism, anti-racism, individual human rights, science etc etc all the goodies of modernism are "bad" because they enable more efficient accumulation. They are very good, but our freedom is also our chains.
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."
On the brains Theses "circumstances" of course include all our thoughts opinions affects and attachments, socially determined. Of course, the profitability of individualism also determines that you will not believe or accept what I say.
Always already zombies.
175: To me that seems totally unsurprising, once employers realize that women can do the same job just as well they save a bunch of money since women are cheeper to hire. I find it pretty frustrating the way people try to break apart the pay gap as a "choice of kind of job" and "doing the same job" components, because there's one labor market for women, and if you move from one kind of job to another they only need to pay your more than your old job did. It's like when RWM moved from museums to video games: she was paid 45, asked for 60, got 70, but all the men were making at least 80. Multiply that by a lot of people switching fields and there's your profession-wide drop.
175
I can't speak to most of the examples mentioned, but "computer programmers" barely existed as a job category in 1950. They were called "computers," and while it was certainly a white collar job it was nothing like being a computer programmer ten or twenty years later.
The much more interesting question is why there were more women majoring in Computer Science thirty years ago than there are now.
167
Is he one of the Venture Bros.? If so, I'm in. Also, remember I predicted Tia Tequila will be Trump's VP nominee in an earlier thread. I'm sticking to that.
If a lot of Trump's appeal to voters is how obviously he keeps offending and confounding the senior political establishment, selecting someone with some traditional credibility for VP could conceivably hurt him.
The camel clutch was my favorite move to use on my brother.
The Wikipedia article on professional wresting holds is unbelievable.
Watching Ben Hur. Wondering if I should mention the gay subtext to the family.
I've never seen it before. It appears not so much gay subtexed as that every single person wants to fuck Heston.
I'm thinking it's a bad idea to trust this guy after the roof thing.
Apparently, subtlety wasn't invented until some time in the 60s.
Between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles' first LP.
This Ben Hur guy has had a varied life.
Romans are inconsistent, dangerous, assholes, which I knew before from watching them drive.
It is Spartacus that has the soliloquy about eating oysters - some like it and some don't? As Gore Vidal writing scripts at that point?
He's giving Pontius Pilot tips on how to live in Jerusalem.
Did they even have drinking gourds in the old world before Columbus?
I've new seen Heston force a burp.
196: I believe that was one of Trumbo's written while blacklisted.
There's only one choice that could share a ticket with Trump: Chuck Norris
208: I've finally been showing my kids the Star Wars. We've now watched episodes 3,4,5, 1, and 2 over the last 2-3 weeks. Daughter loves Amidala's clothes. Son loves everything.
As Gore Vidal writing scripts at that point?
Gore Vidal in the Celluloid Closet talking about Ben Hur.
Apparently, I've been pronouncing "alms" wrong.
210: We're there right now too. We watched 4, 5, 6 over the last week with the 4yo daughter, who likes Leia's hairstyles, asks "Why does Jabba like being mean to people?", wants to know how the special effects are created, likes the big walker robots and is sad when they blow up, does not like Admiral Ackbar, laughs when Ewoks throw rocks at people, jumps up and down shrieking on the couch every time there's a blaster battle.
I hadn't seen any of them in a long time, and hadn't noticed what a Shostakovich ripoff the Empire theme is.
Lurid pointed out the really shocking omission of any father agon on Leia's part, which you'd expect to be a little more personal fpr her, what with her planet getting destroyed and all. Anyway I suppose we're doomed to rent 1, 2, 3 now, which I never saw.
For my money 3 is the best of the lot. 1 & 2 are awful though.
I think Spartacus was Trumbo's first public credit after the blacklist.
179: From what I can recall there was a really long time where "computer"* was mostly seen as a job for women - it involved data entry, word processing, etc. so it was kind of an extension of being a secretary. And that lasted surprisingly long before it "suddenly turned into" a demanding occupation requiring serious knowledge of mathematics or whatever.
*Hey, it actually does make sense as a name for an occupation right?
That the way the movie Trumbo tells it.
113: Going against Trump, you want someone who can get under his skin over and over again. Al Franken probably can do that better than anybody in American politics.
Elizabeth Warren making a run of it on Twitter right now.
Let's be honest - @realDonaldTrump is a loser. Count all his failed businesses. See how he cheated people w/ scams like Trump U.
See how @realDonaldTrump kept his father's empire afloat using strategic corporate bankruptcies to skip out on debt.
179 wasn't very clear. I do think the issue of people sub-consciously devaluing work which is gendered as female is a serious issue. I was just frustrated that I didn't think the article did a good job of talking about it.
I'm not sure that the excerpts that I picked explained what bugged me about the article; it was mostly a tone issue.
221: Trump continuing with "Indian"/special privileges in response.
222
Sorry about that. The "computer" job of the 40's and 50's was closer to being a bookkeeper than being a programmer. It was definitely a skilled job but it was one of the first that was destroyed by digital computers. People who were "computers" (mostly women) mostly did rote arithmetic work. Once "computer programmers" wrote code to do that work the demand for old-style "computers" dropped to nearly zero. Those that were left were "data-entry specialists," which I suspect weren't paid much from the start, because the (skilled) mathematical part of it had been taken over by digital computers.
Apologies for being somewhat late to reply.
I do think the issue of people sub-consciously devaluing work which is gendered as female is a serious issue
Medical doctor was a predominantly-female job in the USSR while it was still mostly male in the UK and elsewhere, and the difference in status was very noticeable.