Clinton was always going to be milquetoast as far as liberal priorities are concerned. I'm not surprised her cabinet was bland and middle of the road. She knew she had to get it past a very hostile Senate, so that might have influenced her choices too.
Nuh-uh, we were going to flip the senate and make a major dent in the house
And so in the short time between when Trump starts World War 3 and the time we all perish, liberals will argue over whether Hillary would have started the war too.
3: Pretty much.
I'm reluctant to put much stock in that list. I mean, Mike fucking Allen? I'm not saying it's all wrong, or that none of the names were discussed internally, just that treating it as "this is whom she would have nominated", no questions asked, is silly. This is a list of people favored by people who want Mike Allen to write favorably about them.
Don't read anything that begins with "Mike Allen says..."
Or what 4 said.
The Starbucks CEO as Labor Secretary. I guess that's a little better than the Hardees CEO we are getting instead.
Still, I feel like it would be good to pick a Labor Secretary to represent labor, rather than management.
6: It's important to have one cabinet member that is sure to bring the coffee to cabinet meetings.
Mike Allen isn't the most credible guy in the world.
Allen, like the Breitbart braintrust, is an extraordinarily clever political media guy, but he's not above publishing the wish-list of some politico as though it is established fact. What this list looks like to me is Mike Allen's idea of what Hillary's cabinet should have looked like, and it's a perfect way to publicize the launch of his new title.
As if anybody pro-Clinton on the left thought she would be a progressive without constant pressure applied...
4 and 5 got there first, so I'll try to add a little value: Per 8, this story is perfect for Allen because regardless of its accuracy, there's absolutely no possibility that it will be debunked. It manages to be something that will be widely discussed without actually being something that matters, so there will be zero reportorial resources devoted to examining it, but it'll be passed around, with credit to Allen, among the readerships of Politico/Counterpunch/Jacobin etc.
Allen -- like Trump himself -- is a savant. It's not clear to me how much of his schtick is premeditated, but he's perfect for the niche he occupies.
I heard Mike Allen had a couple hookers pee all over a mattress at the Ritz Carlton.
11: It makes me very sad to see the media reporting on unsubstantiated rumors. Scurrilous material of this sort should never be made public when it involves a Republican.
Five star and one star hotels are the ones with rubber sheets.
In bathroom design, its important to match the finishes of your fixtures. Once Trump installed gilded toilets, the laws of taste dictated he needed golden showers.
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to comment on the Internet any more. Any contribution I might make will always pale in comparison to 14.
When I first mentioned the golden showers story to my wife, she assumed I meant golden shower fixtures, and couldn't understand how it was newsworthy.
I believe it, although I really don't recognize many of the names.
The biggest problem I had with the selection of Tim Kaine, which really wasn't much of a problem, Kaine really was fine, a terrific choice and a great potential VP, as good as we could expect, but...
...damn it indicated a terminal degree of isolation, insularity, distrust and lack of confidence in outsiders, and just so much damn cronyism.
Clinton knew so many people, and trusted so few.
My sources indicate Hillary was going to appoint an actual ghost cabinet including Eugene Debs as Secretary of Labor.
Why not? The best case scenario I can make out of the current world is that we are living in a rejected Scooby Doo script.
I mean, of course, as a so left Sanders looked like Sessions kinda guy, I had yuuuge problems with Clinton's neoliberalism and centrism and tightness with bankers and liberal interventionist hawkery etc.
But beyond that I felt that her decades of being attacked maybe left her so paranoid and scared of even people like Sanders that although she was brilliant and capable of adjusting mentally on the fly as necessary...
...she also has a burned in deep attitude of a couple dozen people she trusted and a vast mass of hostile strangers she had to manipulate and manage.
Or they would destroy her.
Not arrogance so much as paranoia and vulnerability. She, unlike Trump, didn't think she was always right, she just couldn't tell who could tell her she was wrong and still be an ally. Not necessarily an enemy either, damn she had to think, be careful and cautious.
And there are some who say that the voters, or some voters, caught that vibe, and interpreted it as her seeing everyone as marks. The vast menu of detailed programs, the changing attitude if she is in Des Moines on Tuesday, the secrecy.
The Clintons have been telling everyone exactly who they were for decades now. All you really had to do was listen...
Why not? The best case scenario I can make out of the current world is that we are living in a rejected Scooby Doo script.
And she would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling Feds.
First, let's kill the moderate Democrats. Then everything will be fine.
First they came for the centrists, but I did not speak up, because I was not a centrist.
Then they came for the Starbucks CEOs, but I did not speak up, because I was not a Starbucks CEO.
Finally, if Clinton is like thus, why did so many love her? Well, maybe probably there is a heart of gold in there to difficult for me to see.
But the world of caution and paranoia, of manipulate and manage, of trust few and fear most...is the world women, minorities, and maybe rich people are born into.
White male privilege to not care what people think of you, to say whatever the fuck thing you feel like? Well, some white men care obviously. The ones who want stuff from the world have to care. And the ones who need stuff from the world to survive think they have to care. The ones who protect think they have to care.
Is it privilege or freedom not to care? Is there a difference between freedom and privilege?
Burn shit down, take their stuff, you have nothing to lose but your chains.
I appreciate bob's comments in this thread -- well written, and a reasonable perspective.
26: NickS????
Now I'm wondering if bob has something on you.
26: NickS????
I don't agree with them completely, but I recognize what he's talking about and, more importantly, took them as genuinely thoughtful -- as bob working out his own perspective, and I appreciated them.
NickS isn't wrong here. Maybe bob switched to indica?
My ugly internal schadenfreude over what the new administration will do to the idiots who voted for it is rapidly expanding to include Bernie-bots and leftier-than-thous. Reports like this just make me laugh anymore. You break it, you buy it, assholes.
But EMAILZ!!1oneoneone
I swear politics in 2016 was carefully designed to maximize my misanthropy.
Bernie-bots
Seems like there ought to be a better neologism. I assume that the behavior you criticize here has nothing to do with Sanders.
We could try "Sanders-droids", but Lucas might sue.
In the spirit of "neoliberal", it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less. It has nothing to do with Sanders and everything to do with people whose purity/sexism required them to keep harping on Clinton even after Bernie was out of the race.
29: I trust you realized I was kidding.
But 25 struck me as quintessential McManus -- deep thoughts ending in fire.
Speaking of failures of liberalism, Obama's reluctance to "politicize" Trump's Siberian candidacy has to move him pretty far down the presidential rankings, right? Potentially down to Buchanan territory, the next few years depending.
It'll only bring him down to Buchanan territory if Trump's presidency leads to an actual civil and/or world war, which is admittedly a terrifyingly plausible possibility.
Yeah, although failing to prevent our slide into oligarchy/kleptocracy/apartheid puts him a lot closer to Buchanan than best president of my lifetime. I'm probably overreacting to the short term, but fuck.
As an outgoing president, what was Obama supposed to do? This is a serious question, btw.
I mean, I get why he didn't and I was right there with him in electoral overconfidence, and it might not have made a difference given Republican and Democratic voters' indifference to Trump's obvious pathologies, but we deserved to know.
31: your comment is unclear. Are you trying to hippy-punch?
McConnell putting party before country and humanity is politicization. Obama chose acquiescence over honesty.
45: 31 seems pretty clear to me. But maybe that's because I agree with the sentiments expressed therein.
Yeah, although failing to prevent our slide into oligarchy/kleptocracy/apartheid puts him a lot closer to Buchanan than best president of my lifetime. I'm probably overreacting to the short term, but fuck.
In slide-into-apartheid terms the most relevant parallel is probably Hayes rather than Buchanan. Maybe Grant. In overall terms, I continue to think the best parallel to Trump is Jackson, which would make Obama John Quincy Adams.
Which also implies we have another twenty or thirty years until the next civil war. Hooray!
43: He should have gone public with the Russian hacking early and ordered a full investigation of Trump's affairs. Congress would have tried to obstruct, but all the relevant agencies are in the executive. I think that would have been minimal competence from any president in an equivalent situation wrt foreign interference. As is he basically did nothing before the election and effectively nothing after.
Which also implies we have another twenty or thirty years until the next civil war.
At which point my 15-year old son would surely be deemed too old to serve!
(But I've just, finally, applied for his 'proof of Canadian citizenship' papers [born in Manhattan, to an American father and a Canadian mother = a Canadian citizen by descent.] Because I'll be damned if my boy is to be blown up in some American imperial adventure; and membership [in the Canadian polity] has its privileges).
If it comes to that I doubt Canada will be exempt.
If it comes to that I doubt Canada will be exempt.
Toronto would fall, no doubt. There's still a lot of densely forested wilderness, though, where you could live off-grid. If you don't mind living without electricity or running water, that is. You know, if it ever came to that.
He should have gone public with the Russian hacking early and ordered a full investigation of Trump's affairs. Congress would have tried to obstruct, but all the relevant agencies are in the executive. I think that would have been minimal competence from any president in an equivalent situation wrt foreign interference. As is he basically did nothing before the election and effectively nothing after.
Eh? He did go public with the Russian hacking. Maybe not early early, but certainly it seems before all the intelligence agencies were fully comfortable with it. And the DoJ sought and ultimately in October obtained a FISA warrant to investigate the Alfa Bank stuff, which rather suggests there was an investigation.
Regardless, no matter how horrific Trump was and is, we should be seriously fucking careful about normalising turning the full force of the executive branch against the candidate of the opposing party, especially against the will of Congress.
Congress was certainly willing to use its investigative power against the Dem candidate.
42
puts him a lot closer to Buchanan than best president of my lifetime
I don't know how old you are, but Obama can be pretty bad and still easily be the best of my lifetime. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama.
I'm so old I can add Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and Obama still looks pretty good.
Aided and abetted by the paper of record.
One tidbit of the Time's coverage that looks increasingly crappy in retrospect is this but post-Comey letter "FBI thinks Russia not actually trying to help Trump" piece.
Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia"
As is often the case, if you read past the headline and early paragraphs--And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump--the piece covers a lot of the context for the information that has subsequently come out. But it certainly set a "not much to see here" tone.
In the past 20+ years the NYT politics coverage (although generally *not* it very separate Editorial Board) has been a key *leader* aiding and abetting (and sometimes leading) very fucked up political trends and stories (Whitewater, the Goring of Gore, Iraq, torture enhanced bullshit, Surveillance, ACORN destruction, EMAILZ and Foundations) to the point where I view them as a prime mover in the 20-year+ soft coup that we have just lived through.
... "Newsflash!" I guess...
Speaking of Dem-on-Dem action, it seems out the local party (sub-county-level), with record turnout including my own, just elected the "Groundswell Progressive" slate to represent our assembly at the state level. ("Bernie and Hillary supporters," but they were up against an establishment slate supported by the area Assemblymember in person.) At the same time, the establishment did win in the other EB districts.
I'm annoyed that I only learned this from a local political blog apparently confirmed by tweets; there seems to be nothing official anywhere on the results.
62: That has been incredibly powerful for the Republicans. The NYT comes off generally as mainstream coastal liberal, fairly alienated from (even if cringingly sympathetic to) the Republican base. The fact that the liberal "Paper of Record" has reliably reported the facts of any partisan political controversy in a way that helps Republican candidates and hurts Democrats is so weird, if you expect political affiliation to be consistent, that people don't believe in it even though it's obviously true.
At some point when I retire will explore 62 in more depth, boring as it will be. Carville's "Washington always wins" is actually "New York always wins." In the meantime that Pulitizer Prize blockbuster of 2015/16 that will never be written is how the NY Times and rogue elements in various branches* of the government effectively kneecapped the presumptive then actual Dem candidate).
*Such as on of Sen. Grassley's former aide who became State Dept. OIG deputy director leaking to them on all things Clinton. Also the whole Gowdy committee, fer gawdsakes.
I notice Mattis telling his confirmation hearing what amounts to "I would believe the security establishment over Trump." Fun times.
I really wish Jill Abramson had been there for this election. But of course her dismissal is part of the overall pattern.
Of all the people and institutions I'm pissed at, the New York Times and the FBI are at the top of the list. Whether intentional or not, they conspired to achieve this outcome.
Then comes Trump supporters, Republicans, and the "I'm a Dem/leftist/liberal, but I just can't stand Hillary" types.
All the people on this list got what they either openly or secretly desired.
All my knowledge of the NYT comes from reading their internal innovation report on how they could transform to survive in the post-print age. Which, I couldn't help but notice, was issued as a PDF formatted for printing.
70- I held my tongue publicly about Hillary so maybe your comment doesn't refer to me, but I still feel like it does. It makes me not want to support Democrats in the future. I've been thinking about switching to the Socialist party for my future political activity, maybe you want to encourage that.
I'm sorry that I've hurt your precious feelings. Certainly that's a just and moral model for political activity, so continue on with that.
It is pretty bad when I'm not even allowed to have allowed to have my own private opinion of the candidates.
If you did nothing to convince people not to vote for Hillary in the general election, then I'm not talking about you (for as little as that matters to you or anyone else). You are most welcome to have any opinion you like.
It seems unlikely that I convinced anyone of anything.
I think you might feel more at home at the Party Headquarters at LGM, where there is the official position on everything, and everything else is equally and radically evil. They call themselves liberals over there, so I no longer do.
"The lesser evil is still very evil" stated publicly is morally necessary, because otherwise you are putting yourself in direct and not so subtly violent opposition to the vast numbers of victims of the "lesser evil." Wanna a fucking list.
This is not mere disagreement on tactics or implementation or disputes over policy details, but empathy for those who feel oppressed by both parties, and feel they have nowhere to turn. Or Rawls, morality is always about the fucking least favored in any given socio-political dynamic. That wasn't fucking Hillary Clinton. Find the fucking leper and despised troll or criminal. There is love.
Fuck it. Just fucking Stalinism. We commies understand crazed factionalism, splitting, and circular firing squads but have continued in impotence and irrelevance, because we will not abandon a section (said minority varying of course) of the powerless in order to serve the powerful. This is not ego or feelings or individualism but simple human decency and radical solidarity.
You want to talk about the powerless and victimized, I'll always listen.
You want to support the powerful in any fucking way, any fucking where, you are the enemy. But you can change.
Reach down and spit up, til the day I die.
62: I think you're using the NYT as a synecdoche for the Establishment Media in general, and yeah, I literally think that it took their active connivance to bring us to where we are today, and almost nothing else really matters.
Sure, the neoliberals, the neoconservatives, the Jacobin/Counterpunch Left, the racists, etc., have all got their shares of culpability, but none of it would have been possible without NYT-style "respectable" reporting.
This was a good and alarming thread on the possible consequences of Trumpism to our NATO allies:
https://twitter.com/JasminMuj/status/819609968907354112
That's a funny coincidence. I just commented on that thread. Trump might be more successful than we expect though. At least in the short-term nuclear blackmail could be lucrative.
78.1: A little bit. But I think there has been some particular areas where the NYT has been worse on a few key issues especially involving the Clintons (Whitewater, EMAILZ). And they also often serve as the "lead" and do a lot to set the agenda for other mainstream outlets
Oops for blackmail please substitute extortion.
At least in the short-term nuclear blackmail could be lucrative.
Except for the "sustainability" aspect, unsustainable solutions are often better than their sustainable counterparts.
81: The NYT has also got a unique level of culpability in that it is better positioned to remedy this shit than almost anyone.
I agree about the NYT.
I don't agree with 70 that all these folks got what they wanted. I think a bunch of them wanted a wounded Clinton to straggle over the finish line, having been Taught a Lesson.
Agree with 85.last. It is interesting how wildly defensive many of the @nytpolitics (and other) reporters have been on twitter. I think that in their heart of hearts they understand the role they will be assigned in this history of this awfulness and are vainly trying to forestall it. ("Did Putin/Comey keep her from campaigning in Wisconsin" kind of stuff.)
Am I allowed to be mad at Hillary for having the Hooker Pee/Aid and Comfort to the Enemy Dossier in October and not doing anything with it?
87: If the Hollywood Access tape didn't stop him in his tracks, why would you expect a more deniable dossier to do so?
The Hollywood Access tape was brutal, but he had time to recover. I remember at one point it was said that there would two other tapes, but they never showed up. Probably they are still sitting on the shelf next to the Whitey Tape.
It would have been nice to leak the dossier right after the Clapper interference.
I hope Trump does for watersports what Clinton did for blowjobs.
Or what Jimmy Carter did for unrequited lusting.
Come to think of it, Mother Jones had a copy of it prior to the election, but failed to got Full BuzzFeed. This is a pretty serious case of the Liberal Media's integrity working against it. If Fox News or Breitbart had had something like that on Hillary, they wouldn't have hesitated to release it. But f'ing Mother Jones with the journalistic ethics.
92: Sure, but in that context and with the NYT having the material, their leading with the FBI BS spin in the link in 61 is pretty egregious. (I wonder if their sources were the rogues in the NY office.)
89.last: Comey I presume.
Yeah, I do tend get my high-level-intelligence-community-guys-who's-last-names-start-with-the-letter-C mixed up.
(I wonder if their sources were the rogues in the NY office.)
And I wonder if Putin has the goods on them.
I think a bunch of them wanted a wounded Clinton to straggle over the finish line, having been Taught a Lesson.
I suppose. And Infinitely better than Trump, cause SCOTUS
But
a) treatment of Sanders after the convention showed she didn't learn anything, and was likely incapable
b) With this Republican or nominally Democratic + Bluedogs Congress, there was no way she was going to spend four years vetoing everything, and the compromises and deals would have the Democratic Brand attached forever. You know, like ACA but ten times worse. She would have driven the nails into the Party Coffin Obama built.
The problem really was not adequately explored during the primaries.
Remember the Gingrich Congress during Bill's second term? I do.
Yet nearly twenty years later it is Clinton's Welfare Reform and Clinton who repealed Glass-Steagell. That's the way it works, and the way it woulda worked.
Childcare? Free tuition? Clean energy?
How many fucking pounds of flesh would Ryan have demanded, what indispensable policies would have been sacrificed?
Sanders might have dealt a little, but I trusted Bernie far more to go all Harry Truman and get on TV and say Ryan and the House can just fuck off and die until the midterms than the woman inordinately proud of knowing how to get things done.
I have to say I think you are on the right track with those last two. I still think it made sense to vote for HRC though. I think there is a chance Trump will make nuclear extortion or similarly evil policies the norm the way W created the war on terra. Once that happens there will be no going back.
85.last This is so much like the cynical reasoning of many of the Brexit Leave supporters it's scary.
89 Unlike the Whitey Tape I'm sure there are many such tapes of Trump saying similar or far worse that actually exist.
89 Unlike the Whitey Tape I'm sure there are many such tapes of Trump saying similar or far worse that actually exist.
I agree! So where were those tapes when they were needed?
In Mark Burnett's safe, probably.
Speaking of the Times and Twitter, reminds me of a brief moment of minor Twitter glory for me from early December..
Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates
9 Dec 2016
Still miss N Y Times near-daily coverage of Hillary Clinton's emails ("raises troubling questions") & Maureen Dowd attack on her "ambition."
She the retweeted my reply (under my real-named* account not JP Stormcrow) was then retweeted by JCO.
I do wonder if @nytpolitics has really internalized the role they will be assigned in world history.
*Sometime during this year I will almost certainly retire, and am planning to reduce my use of anonymity on the web. We'll see.
Reduce anonymity and wear your pants rolled.
What with death stalking us all but often at a great remove, late capitalism, and 401ks, I'm wondering how I will ever retire without worrying about the future. Then I remember alcohol exists.
|?
Just spent my morning reading 250+ comments at LGM (hey better baseline than balloonjuice) in a thread about Corey Booker going against his party on drug importation from Canada. It of course devolved into 2020 possibles and the consensus seemed to be that anybody who didn't suck was unelectable.
Booker - Wall Street Shill, and for blacks, attacked Obama-kamisama in an election year. Unmarried, which may be a plus for primaries. Fantastic on the stump, nomination really is his to lose.
Biden, Warren, Sanders, Jerry Brown - Way too old.
Kamala Harris - really does appear to have let the worst of the worst mortgage sharks, Steve Mnuchin aka Trump cabineteer - completely slide on slamdunk prosecution. Got big campaign contribution from him
soon after. Married for Senate race
Deval Patrick - works for Bain Capital, wife deeply opposed
Most acceptables were charisma challenged. Hanks and Clooney came up in desperation.
And this is LGM saying all candidates really suck. Read it and weep
|>
Searching, I may not be the first with "Obama kamisama" but unusual
Japanese, being the land of a million pretty equal gods (kami), have to make a special effort to flirt with monotheism
Tamara Draut's Sleeping Giant is strongly recommended. She's good people, knows her stuff, politically active, blue collar family on downhill run due to globalization, hits good mainline Dem buttons, optimistic
So Dem politicians all grab the Wall Street/corp bucks? Shits different now used to suck to be poor, now it also sucks and is scary to be not rich.
Tamara Draut's Sleeping Giant is strongly recommended. She's good people, knows her stuff, politically active, blue collar family on downhill run due to globalization, hits good mainline Dem buttons, optimistic
I'm glad that you ultimately liked it.
And this is LGM saying all candidates really suck. Read it and weep
To put on my "cockeyed optimism" hat, for a moment, this is good news for anybody hoping for a charismatic "outside" -- somebody not entrenched in the party structure. The combination of a (presumably) weak opponent and lack of obvious "establishment" candidate means that anybody who wants to position themselves for a presidential run should be getting excited about 2020*
* Having typed that, I realize that the depressing scenario is Mike Bloomberg making a serious run.
To put on my "cockeyed optimism" hat, for a moment, this is good news for anybody hoping for a charismatic "outside" -- somebody not entrenched in the party structure.
You've got one of those already and I'm not sure it's turning out well.
Well, Obama was one such, but he waited till the equivalent of 2020.
I'm curious as to what Comey revealed in a House briefing this AM to elicit this response. Especially from Cummings who generally has the patience of a saint:
"I was non-judgmental until the last 15 minutes. I no longer have that confidence in him," Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), ranking member of the Veterans Affairs Committee, said as he left the meeting in the Capitol. "Some of the things that were revealed in this classified briefing -- my confidence has been shook."
Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), senior Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, delivered a similar condemnation."I'm extremely concerned -- extremely," he said.
"I'll just -- I'm very angry," echoed Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.).
111: Spencey seems to have more details. Says he repeatedly refuse to say anything about current investigations of Trump-Russia ties, even though it was a classified forum. He also refused to give any justification of why the Weiner laptop emails were worthy of public disclosure but not this.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dc-national-guard-chief-removed-inauguration
Trump's ordered the GOC of the DC National Guard to resign at 1201 in the middle of his inauguration (security for which is the responsibility of, well, GOC DC National Guard). Same time as all the ambassadors, etc. This is just weird. Is he going to fire any other generals as well? After all, they're all presidential appointees too...
And this is LGM saying all candidates really suck
Gillebrand? Klaubacher?
Is there any way to detect a purge of civil servants? Or an exodus, I suppose.
Is it me or has Trump's self presentation gotten better? Disturbing.