Right Wing Machine

[Cancel7]

Here is Krugman on the election. I don't agree with all of this - I think he is being too soft on the Clintons for one example. But, his main point is something that I could not agree more with, and I wish people would get this. Were you guys asleep during the 04 election, which just provided more evidence of this? Or did you think that attacking a war hero as a coward and a fake was nothing?

In the 90's it was the Clinton's fault...in 04, it was Kerry's, he didn't know how to respond. It's always someone else's fault. Why can't we face the fact that there are billions of dollars at stake for this right wing machine, and they will mow you down. They will mow their own mothers down.

Lessons of 1992
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It’s starting to feel a bit like 1992 again. A Bush is in the White House, the economy is a mess, and there’s a candidate who, in the view of a number of observers, is running on a message of hope, of moving past partisan differences, that resembles Bill Clinton’s campaign 16 years ago.

Now, I’m not sure that’s a fair characterization of the 1992 Clinton campaign, which had a strong streak of populism, beginning with a speech in which Mr. Clinton described the 1980s as a “gilded age of greed.” Still, to the extent that Barack Obama 2008 does sound like Bill Clinton 1992, here’s my question: Has everyone forgotten what happened after the 1992 election?

Let’s review the sad tale, starting with the politics.

Whatever hopes people might have had that Mr. Clinton would usher in a new era of national unity were quickly dashed. Within just a few months the country was wracked by the bitter partisanship Mr. Obama has decried.

This bitter partisanship wasn’t the result of anything the Clintons did. Instead, from Day 1 they faced an all-out assault from conservatives determined to use any means at hand to discredit a Democratic president.

For those who are reaching for their smelling salts because Democratic candidates are saying slightly critical things about each other, it’s worth revisiting those years, simply to get a sense of what dirty politics really looks like.

No accusation was considered too outlandish: a group supported by Jerry Falwell put out a film suggesting that the Clintons had arranged for the murder of an associate, and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page repeatedly hinted that Bill Clinton might have been in cahoots with a drug smuggler.

So what good did Mr. Clinton’s message of inclusiveness do him?

Meanwhile, though Mr. Clinton may not have run as postpartisan a campaign as legend has it, he did avoid some conflict by being strategically vague about policy. In particular, he promised health care reform, but left the business of producing an actual plan until after the election.

This turned out to be a disaster. Much has been written about the process by which the Clinton health care plan was put together: it was too secretive, too top-down, too politically tone-deaf. Above all, however, it was too slow. Mr. Clinton didn’t deliver legislation to Congress until Nov. 20, 1993 — by which time the momentum from his electoral victory had evaporated, and opponents had had plenty of time to organize against him.

The failure of health care reform, in turn, doomed the Clinton presidency to second-rank status. The government was well run (something we’ve learned to appreciate now that we’ve seen what a badly run government looks like), but — as Mr. Obama correctly says — there was no change in the country’s fundamental trajectory.

So what are the lessons for today’s Democrats?

First, those who don’t want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don’t want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s — a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy — are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1).

The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn’t one of them.

Second, the policy proposals candidates run on matter.

I have colleagues who tell me that Mr. Obama’s rejection of health insurance mandates — which are an essential element of any workable plan for universal coverage — doesn’t really matter, because by the time health care reform gets through Congress it will be very different from the president’s initial proposal anyway. But this misses the lesson of the Clinton failure: if the next president doesn’t arrive with a plan that is broadly workable in outline, by the time the thing gets fixed the window of opportunity may well have passed.

My sense is that the fight for the Democratic nomination has gotten terribly off track. The blame is widely shared. Yes, Bill Clinton has been somewhat boorish (though I can’t make sense of the claims that he’s somehow breaking unwritten rules, which seem to have been newly created for the occasion). But many Obama supporters also seem far too ready to demonize their opponents.

What the Democrats should do is get back to talking about issues — a focus on issues has been the great contribution of John Edwards to this campaign — and about who is best prepared to push their agenda forward. Otherwise, even if a Democrat wins the general election, it will be 1992 all over again. And that would be a bad thing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/op...gewanted=print

[Blackwater Lunchbreak]

So we should ignore the heinous character flaws of Hillary and Bill Clinton the rapist, and instead focus on ramming through a healthcare plan.

The working class would be better served by protectionist measures to keep them in the workforce, than by handouts.

[Onceler]

The comparison is way too broad & linear, and the tone of this is far too cynical for me.

Not defending the GOP by any means, but Clinton started his term with gays in the military, and an extended closed door operation for universal healthcare lead by the first lady. They opened the doors, unleashed a 1,000+ page document full of new entitlements with no means of paying for them, and told Congress to vote for it.

I believe sexual orientation should have no relevance to serving in the military, and I believe in universal healthcare, but there are ways of working these initiatives without alienating huge blocks of people.

Will any Dem be shredded in office? Sure, but there are varying degrees of shred, and it is absolutely not a given that an Obama Presidency is doomed to the most extreme of the attacks from the start.

[Onceler]

Also, don't forget that Clinton never got a majority of the vote, and didn't have a broad coalition of independents & Republicans voting for him.

[Cancel7]

The comparison is way too broad & linear, and the tone of this is far too cynical for me.

Not defending the GOP by any means, but Clinton started his term with gays in the military, and an extended closed door operation for universal healthcare lead by the first lady. They opened the doors, unleashed a 1,000+ page document full of new entitlements with no means of paying for them, and told Congress to vote for it.

I believe sexual orientation should have no relevance to serving in the military, and I believe in universal healthcare, but there are ways of working these initiatives without alienating huge blocks of people.

Will any Dem be shredded in office? Sure, but there are varying degrees of shred, and it is absolutely not a given that an Obama Presidency is doomed to the most extreme of the attacks from the start.

Led by the right wing attack machine in talk radio, they were on him from day one. I'm not sure what gays in the military has to do with it.

What do you think happened with Kerry? How did he ask for what he got? A decorated war veteran turned into a coward, a liar, a fake, and a murderer.

[Onceler]

Led by the right wing attack machine in talk radio, they were on him from day one. I'm not sure what gays in the military has to do with it.

What do you think happened with Kerry? How did he ask for what he got? A decorated war veteran turned into a coward, a liar, a fake, and a murderer.

Kerry pissed off a large group of vets who had a vendetta against him & played into the GOP's hands.

Krugman's analysis could be correct, but if Obama has a broad coalition of indies & Republicans voting for him, and wins a general with a solid majority, the attack machine is only unleashed at the GOP's peril. Any President with that kind of mandate gets a grace period, at the very least.

[uscitizen]

This links into my theory of why the clinton years were so good for most of us. The republicans were concentrating on getting Clowntoon instead of screwing us.

[Cypress]

Kerry pissed off a large group of vets who had a vendetta against him & played into the GOP's hands.

Krugman's analysis could be correct, but if Obama has a broad coalition of indies & Republicans voting for him, and wins a general with a solid majority, the attack machine is only unleashed at the GOP's peril. Any President with that kind of mandate gets a grace period, at the very least.

"the attack machine is only unleashed at the GOP's peril. Any President with that kind of mandate gets a grace period, at the very least."

Onceler, I used to believe in the myth of those popular mandates too.

But, after the landslide of the 2006 elections, when I thought the Dems had a clear mandate to end the war, I learned otherwise. If anything, the GOP hunkered down in the trenches, clung even more to their Iraq war, and hurled even more "surrender monkeys" insults at the Dems. The Dems weren't blameless by any means, but I think that the Dems naively thought their "mandate" could pull just enough republican support to their side to mandate a troop withdrawl deadline.

It didn't happen. And let's start with the premise that, in this divided nation, Obama at best is going to be another 51-49% president.

[Little-Acorn]

Krugman can always be counted on to blame anybody and everybody - except Democrats - for the Democrats' problems.

This article is quite consistent, for him.

[Epicurus]

Krugman can always be counted on to blame anybody and everybody - except Democrats - for the Democrats' problems.

This article is quite consistent, for him.

Yeah he's a partisan tool.

[uscitizen]

and none of us are partisan whacks ?

[Epicurus]

and none of us are partisan whacks ?

Just you, Cypress, and WRL.

[uscitizen]

Just keep telling your self that....

[Epicurus]

Just keep telling your self that....

If I'm partisan at all, it's to the platform of the Libertarian Party. And I'm not even partisan to that, actually, because I talk shit about their ineptitude constantly.

[DigitalDave]

Hillary and Obama are getting viscious with one another and Krugman is talking about the Republicans attack machine. Holy shit, look at Hillary's! She is as bad as Bush.