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Chronojam posted:I wonder how many started to believe they had this in the bag, for sure, and were truly crushing Obama's campaign? They were so proud of that one cell phone app. Probably more than a few. I don't doubt the Obama campaign had some of these kinds of victory-is-certain types and the reason we're not hearing about them is that Obama won. And then I consider the vast array of data available to the Obama campaign and the volunteer infrastructure they possessed, and think there probably weren't that many who believed they were going to win as an article of faith alone, since the campaign seemed to have a very clear view of how things were going. There may have been all manner of people certain of victory but it's probably due to the fact that they saw it coming, and had numbers to show. The Romney campaign seemed to just rely on this massive underlying dislike of the President that did not actually exist, which would explain why so many conservatives waved 2010 around like it was a prelude. It served the narrative and was a data point, which was apparently enough for the Romney campaign.
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Dec 4, 2012 03:23
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waffle posted:The power of denial is great--I'm sure the Obama folks were relying on actual data in their confidence, but to be fair, I'm sure if Obama had actually been losing, many of them would have been relying on a massive underlying dislike that didn't actually exist (thankfully for them and us, it did) I think the campaign's adherence to data and results would have won the campaign regardless - were something to shift, the niagara-scale feed of data would have allowed them to either get out in front of it or mitigate it directly. It's pretty powerful to be the Google of presidential campaigns when it comes to data usage, you can tack very closely in your message to the tone of public sentiment while the other guys just try to wing it on hunches and unskewing. I would say you'd be right about, say, the Kerry campaign or the base at that time, but Obama's campaign is two for two on making the opponent's campaign look like a campaign for junior high homecoming queen. The fact that the GOP is 2 for 2 on bricking the VP pick only compounds that gap by opening another front.
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Dec 4, 2012 07:35
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FMguru posted:3 for 3 - don't forget the Hilary Clinton clown show orchestrated by Mark Penn which didn't know how individual primary states allocated their votes when they made their strategy. Ah, I'd missed that  I honestly think Obama's wish is that constituents place pressure against his opponents for him, and he just talks nicely and gets people mad at the GOP because they are against all the good poo poo he likes to talk about with that soaring rhetoric of his. It's a bit like the Gracchi, where when he faces a bunch of dongwrangling obstructionists in the Senate, he just goes and takes his proposals directly to the citizenry. Except that's where the similarity ends since doing that actually had power in Rome, and both the Gracchi brothers were closer to Huey Long than Obama, what with their land reforms and antagonism towards the aristocracy. Obama just seems to be waffling on everything and hoping everyone's bright enough and wary enough to crapflood their congressperson's office.
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Dec 4, 2012 12:11
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Sir Kodiak posted:The fact that there are good-tasting, low-cost meals that can be made with relatively little prep time if planned in advance, and that these meals aren't seeing the kind of use they could be, is relevant to the discussion of feeding the poor in America. I'm all for expanding food support, it's both moral and good for the economy, but we could also be doing a better job with education and with making cheap, healthy food available. What's most important is that people eat, but it's a shame how much we end up subsidizing pre-prepared garbage. E: Wow, that ended up being posted into the wrong thread, I blame the Awful android app and my phone. It should have gone into the global warming thread. As for this quote the reason the working poor have such lovely nutrition is typically that they're handling things like long bus commutes, single parenting, lovely shifts, and multiple jobs, which take away that prep time. Not disagreeing that cheap healthy food is possible with prep time, just that most of the people who get hit hardest by the nutrition issue are basically unable to devote the time needed due to a complex combination of factors that will end in a derail. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Dec 6, 2012 |
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Dec 6, 2012 06:15
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Arbitrary Coin posted:What Holy poo poo, that is some cocktail. It's like he took the trunk of the car from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Well, it would be the other way around and they just were rolling with Kennedy's medicine cabinet. Because god drat, they even got the adrenochrome with the animal organ cells On a topical note, Christie can put his douchebaggery to good use when he directs it behind noble things. He nominated a highly qualified judge to the NJSC, and got some flak for it because the judge was a Muslim. At his press conference he flat out called it a "bunch of crap" (pretty sure that's verbatim, he definitely called it crap in one way or another) and got testy about it, same with the Fire Island stuff during Sandy, as well as some moments during the aftermath where he addressed people getting whiny about him working with Obama. It comes off as somewhat honest and lends credence to his "no bullshit charm" people like to grant him (seems they forgot about his nixing of the train tunnel, saying it went into the basement of Macy's, his blowing his top repeatedly at people who asked him about stuff like teachers, etc) but I think it's a manifestation of a temper that would be tough to fully control. He's a loose cannon in that regard and it would drown out any reasonable discussion he might put forth at a debate. He also could stand to lose weight for strictly image reasons (though it would also be a healthy thing to not be morbidly obese) but he's got a bigger image problem posed by his temper and he will torpedo himself the moment he lays into the GOP base for questioning his judgment with their goofy phobias.
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Dec 12, 2012 21:51
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andrew smash posted:For whatever it's worth, the "animal organ cells" mentioned almost certainly refers to dessicated extract of the thyroid glands of slaughtered pigs, which was the way hypothyroidism was treated for a long time before synthetic thyroid hormone existed. It's even still around, if you ever see advertisements for "all natural thyroid remedies" or whatever online/on TV/etc it's almost certainly pig thyroid. That's not terribly odd, we've used animals to generate lots of medicinal hormones - insulin is a big one. Pigs share some kind of similarity in some system or another (like immune system, maybe?) with humans so they are a good place to go to when you need a hormone.
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Dec 13, 2012 03:46
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jeffersonlives posted:Nancy Pelosi, officially neutral in 2008 but widely believed to be one of the tacit/behind the scenes Obama supporters, has publicly expressed her desire to draft Hillary Clinton into the race in 2016. As effective and generally good a president as Hillary would be, I honestly think that she will decline. She's expressed all-but-unequivocal disinterest in running for the nomination, is up against the age boundary, and will be risking looking like the mature, deliberate Kerry to (any of several younger and more idealistic primary opponents)'s hot-blooded Bush. Not that the country wouldn't want a) a woman for president at long fuckin' last, or b) the most unquestionably qualified and tenured statesperson we have that isn't a complete firebrand, or c) Hillary Clinton for any random reason up/down to and including saying "President Clinton" again. There's a lot of idiots who would vote against her due to her name (either Clinton hatred or '  dynasty' concerns) as well. I'd vote for her, for what it's worth. There are a few exceptions but who knows how things will be going into 2016. If the GOP successfully sandbags the country for another four years then I imagine a lot of the younger prospects will stay off the trail so that they don't damage their brand by inadvertently winning the nomination. On the other hand, Biden is very unlikely to run. His talk about running in 2016 is just Biden being Biden. Hillary and Obama have almost undoubtedly grown a good professional rapport and she would be a given to inherit OFA (HFA?) if Plouffe and Axelrod (if they stay) choose to act in the primary. I could be totally wrong and Hillary could run, her exit in the coming term could be due to friction between her leadership at State and the White House, and that frostiness would bar any OFA help, who would enter the primary on behalf of  Cuomo and he'd end up out-triangulating the opponent in the general.
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Dec 18, 2012 22:02
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jeffersonlives posted:Both Clinton and Biden have built their entire lives around becoming president for decades now. It is difficult for me to fathom, assuming stable health and family situations, how either or both pass on their last, best shot at it. Because they both know what the score is as far as people voting for septuagenarians/octogenarians in the general, or even in the primary in a lot of cases. It's a rigorous process and to put themselves through that just for a loss in the primary or a loss in the general which hands the executive branch over to the next deranged crazyass from the GOP is something they would undoubtedly shy away from in absence of an exceedingly high confidence in their chance of victory. I would put better chances on Hillary running than Biden but for both they're faced with the prospect of a primary stocked with the likes of Tulsi Gabbard or Deval Patrick or even the longshots like Castro or Booker. Youth and energy are a tough thing to overcome, even with the kind of experience either Joe or Hillary would bring to the table. But this is heavily dependent on how things are in 2016. If Obama really lays on the heat in this term and leaves office with FDR-like popularity it makes an easy road for whoever wins the primary.
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Dec 19, 2012 01:40
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hobbesmaster posted:So what's going to be their new definition of assault rifles? A rifle painted black? Semi-automatic rifle with a pistol grip and a detachable magazine of over 5/10 rounds? The old ban's poo poo about bayonet lugs and threaded barrels was dumb but other parts of it did a good job in concert to narrow down a range of weapons that were either very good at hunting hamburger or designed to put holes in people rapidly.
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Dec 21, 2012 18:51
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Sil posted:To be fair though, the hilarity came from batshit nuts supporters, not the candidates themselves. In the Republican primary the insane seems much more evenly distributed. I have a nagging feeling that a more than measurable segment of the Tea Party is just old Hillary supporters from 2008 who were either the last pinch of Dixiecrats being voided, or just a bunch of bitter old blue dogs who took 2008 very personally.
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Dec 28, 2012 13:27
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Biden and Cuomo might both be used car salesmen, but Biden would sell me a clean 'vette and Cuomo would hawk nothing but the same Plymouth Acclaim with sawdust in the gearbox and a leaky oil pan.
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Jan 24, 2013 14:46
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ReidRansom posted:Whoa, she's really nearsighted. She's in her mid 60's.
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Jan 25, 2013 07:06
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watt par posted:Hey gently caress you man that dog was cold and apparently the entire city of Newark is so far up its own rear end they can't pick up a drat animal. Seriously though, what a bunch of twats. You act as though "twat" isn't the de facto demonym for residents of New Jersey.
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Jan 26, 2013 18:52
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The Warszawa posted:I just want someone replaced by Goodwin Liu on the Supreme Court, because gently caress the Senate. Replace Scalia with Goodwin Liu, Thomas with (by that time former president) Obama. SCOTUS Justice Obama would have opinions everyone would want to read because you know that poo poo would be fine-rear end literature. Opens with a description of the case, slices out the actual question before the court, then makes 10 pages of heart-lifting speech material before wrapping up with his rationale and dissent/concurrence. It would almost make you forgive the decision being something awful like domestic armed drone use not violating posse comitatus because the exercise of force embodied in the drone is not a deployed soldier on the ground.
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Feb 5, 2013 08:42
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Other people drink water mid-speech but (and this is loving important) they don't look like goddamn raccoons in headlights doing it. Other people might get a bit of dry mouth giving a speech but (and this is important) they don't also break into a flop sweat and seize up like they came to halfway through a colonoscopy. That water bottle and his stilted delivery weren't what killed him, it was that he was already into engine fire bail out territory by the time either came around. You don't loving lean on your working-class-neighborhood house when you've been trying to sell that house for months. You don't follow up this particular SOTU address with the pie in the sky bullshit that you literally just lost ground in both houses with. In short, stop trying to play off that goofy-as-gently caress water bottle as no big deal, because nobody is going to argue with you on that. It isn't even a nail in the coffin and trying to salvage that disaster by deflecting the derision from looking creepy while drinking is exactly why the GOP is a bunch of fuckups at this point in time. If you think that bedshitting extravaganza was great were it not for that blasted cottonmouth then you ought to just stop now.
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Feb 14, 2013 11:35
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eSports Chaebol posted:Now my dream is Emmanuel vs. Christie and the first TV debate breaks down into them stepping away from the podiums, shouting and pointing at each other and yelling "gently caress you!" "No, gently caress YOU!" Ending in Rahm stabbing Christie with a steak knife screaming "DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!"
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Feb 17, 2013 11:12
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orangesampson posted:Not to be out done, but I hope Bobby Jindal throws himself into the ring. They tried this in Nebraska, too. It failed here. It's basically this year's murder-your-employees-for-fun-and-profit/VOTE? HAH gently caress YOU legislation
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Feb 19, 2013 09:11
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mcmagic posted:It's good for him, esp is he's getting ready to run for the Sanate, for people to be talking about him as a presidential candidate. I doubt he runs though. It's like a mashup of 'Sane' and 'Senate,' comical as it is contrarian. I know it's a typo, but the Senate is anything but sane and there's never a bad time to point that out. Unless it is from the House of Representatives that one is making such a claim, in which case they'd still be right in the absolute but hilariously wrong in the relative. Much like how Chris Christie might call Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh fat. Yes, they are both clearly tubby, but Governor Krispy Kreme over there has about as much room to talk as his fat rear end does in a freight elevator.
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Feb 23, 2013 11:00
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SilentD posted:Making social progress also involves screwing the poors and enabling the cosmopolitan rich to run things how they want. So gently caress yeah GOP! Uh, social progress is typically defined by a society's transition towards 'a floor beneath which we do not let people fall' in the hazily remembered words of Michael Higgins. That's quite the opposite of loving over the poor. And when you remedy the societal problems from which the working poor are created as a class, you are almost invariably distributing wealth (and through that, power) from the top (your cosmopolitan rich) to the bottom. That idea of the floor - it applies to more than wealth and power. It's a sort of maximum distance below egalitarianism that society will tolerate. The higher that floor is, the less society tolerates the treatment of certain people as unequal, the greater value you could assign to that society's social progress. So no, social progress does not mean loving over the poor, and yes it means equal treatment of women, LGBTQ people, the mentally ill, etc. Power is almost invariably tied to wealth regardless of economic doctrine. Even the CPC has wealth cloistered at the Party's top. Wealth is power, the more a society transfers the wealth/power from the hoarders to the disenfranchised laborers the more progress it can objectively be said to have accomplished. If you want to read your own interpretation of government action in there be my guest but just make sure you point out that you're making that assumption on your own and it wasn't me saying it was only possible by government action.
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Feb 26, 2013 22:01
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TyroneGoldstein posted:You know, I can honestly say I'm surprised he could be that much of a nubcake when it comes to politics. He always came off as a bit more savvy. I bet his camp is hoping people will forget everything previous to this point and just run with it...or that there's enough time between now and election season 2016 spectacular to make that dream come true. In his defense the GOP/self-identified conservatives are basically adrift and incurring some political equivalent of Brownian motion. There's no way to discern what direction they'll move in one week let alone 6 months.
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Mar 5, 2013 19:59
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ReindeerF posted:Isn't that mostly about him having a big pissypants fight with Rachel Maddow? She really ridiculed the poo poo out of him beyond her usual level as I recall and made a special point out of doing entire long segments that were all basically, "This guy is an incompetent moron and should be shitcanned." Not to mention 'Rrrrreince Priebus' with a big ol' trill on the R. While she couldn't specifically say 'so after they fired the black guy they hired a guy with the whitest name possible,' she basically said it sounds like something out of a yacht club. But aside from that issue with his name she gives him the same 'is bad at his job' treatment she gives John Boehner. Which is true, they're both bad at their jobs and they both come off like alcoholics from time to time.
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Mar 8, 2013 17:37
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Zero_Grade posted:It really can't be mentioned enough that his name is Reince Priebus. Was it Jon Stewart or maybe Colbert that said something along the lines of "Maybe his name is actually Ryan Peterson but he's never sober enough to pronounce it?" e: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-stewart-tears-apart-rnc-for-basing-entire-first-night-around-misquoting-obama/ Yep, starts about 2:30 in. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Mar 9, 2013 |
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Mar 9, 2013 14:35
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Has the 'John Doe' investigation furore around Walker quieted down?
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Mar 27, 2013 22:42
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Alter Ego posted:Pretty sure any primary opponent Walker has is immediately going to bring up the fact that he's so dumb he couldn't figure out it wasn't David Koch on the phone that one time. "If you're the governor, you should know when your Koch is doing the talking, Scott Walker couldn't tell the difference between his Koch and some random blogger. WRONG FOR WISCONSIN ALSO HE'S A VIKINGS FAN."
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Mar 30, 2013 03:17
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Cemetry Gator posted:Also, I don't think the Supreme Court would ever really hear any legal challenges on it, or address it beyond "The dude's legit." It'd just be political suicide and it would just invite a lot of controversy on the court. And then you got the whole part where the Chief Justice swore in Obama (4 times), which would be problematic. Plus, you'd just create a huge mess, since you have to try and dismantle a presidency, which is pretty much impossible. And then who is president? I believe it would still be Diamond Joe Biden.
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May 4, 2013 19:17
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glowing-fish posted:Ronald Reagan at least appeared very sincere. And he probably actually was very sincere. He probably was sincere because he was likely in his usual semi-lucid highly suggestible fugue state.
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May 7, 2013 03:31
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Kingsbury2 posted:I think Chelsea is more electable than Hilary. This is not a troll, this is an honest to god gut feeling. I think she would be 35 by 2016. Her husband is also Jewish, which wouldn't but a huge campaign issue to anyone who is not a racist, but it's just an indication that she herself is probably not a racist... Am I just paranoid thinking that there might be people in positions of power and influence who are racists? Not in a Hitler sense, but more in a "this person is a racist and has access to more than a million dollars in liquid assets" sense. Three years before 2008, Obama was a Senator. Chelsea Clinton may be popular enough and may have access to a top-rate campaign team, but she simply has not spent any time in elected office. Not that she wouldn't be prepared for the job, it would just be such a major item that she would be out of the primary by spring. Get her into a senate seat for a few years, face time pushing good causes, gladhand the folks who need gladhanding, and kiss the rings that need kissing. Then you aren't just riding mom and dad's Rolodex even though you're clearly benefiting from it.
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May 7, 2013 16:58
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SedanChair posted:Chelsea Clinton is by all accounts a rather lazy young woman. (said the goon) I'm not saying she's lazy, I'm saying she doesn't have the kind of relation to electoral politics that's a de facto requirement these days. It's not like she sits around doing nothing, she just hasn't ever taken an elected office. E: \/ oh, my bad. Misinterpreted it. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 19:09 on May 7, 2013 |
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May 7, 2013 17:48
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Cheekio posted:Talk about the Daily Show and Chris Christie in the White House? Obviously gotta follow that up with Taft 2.0. Christie's at least Taft 4.0. Glad the guy seems to be taking an interest in backing off the obesity cliff, but god drat. Taft probably weighed less than one of Christie's asscheeks.
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May 8, 2013 16:22
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Zwabu posted:This doesn't surprise me in the least. There are never any guarantees, but the right should be terrified of a Clinton run. She is well positioned, at this premature date, to clobber the opposition. The standard racism won't be nearly as potent a weapon against her, and she will likely poach off a few percent of the GOP female vote (just my gut feeling). This could lead to comfortable margins in states like VA and OH and a win going away.  you might not have noticed but they're trying to make Benghazi a thing again.
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May 9, 2013 05:45
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It's never not awe-inspiring how the GOP drags out the long knives for their former bestie Chris Christie because he acted like a grown-rear end adult one time after the federal government helped his state recover from the massive flooding following a loving hurricane. It will never stop being amazing to me.
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May 9, 2013 17:34
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FlamingLiberal posted:Interesting that republicans like Adele so much though. To be honest they probably didn't like her until they saw her on TV.
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May 10, 2013 12:47
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knife super power posted:How would you even see with the campaign posters on the windshield? Where we're going... Actually, yeah there's no way that kind of thing isn't a road hazard unless it was being driven in some kind of parade route where all you needed to see were the tail lights of the guy in front of you. Also, Hillary plus Axelrod/Plouffe would be a loving steamroller. That is, if their personalities line up. They might not get along with Hillary, though that's mitigated by her being SoS and likely having regular interaction with them. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 10:27 on May 28, 2013 |
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May 28, 2013 10:17
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Neremworld posted:They have to pass immigration reform first in order to benefit from it. And they already have their super-stars talking about how they want it dead (because of gays), so he's counting his chickens before they hatch. If they want immigration reform dead (alienating immigrants) because of gays (alienating gays) then they're counting chickens before they even have a henhouse.
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Jun 16, 2013 19:09
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DynamicSloth posted:All Hillary needs is 90% of the Obama coalition to turn up again and John Kerry's numbers with white women. That is what makes everyone salivate over a Hillary run. Something would have to drastically, horribly, Sarah Palin/47% wrong to really make it stop looking like the election is just ceremony.
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Jun 17, 2013 21:19
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Joementum posted:The flip side of that coin is, of course, what happens if Hillary doesn't run. https://www.readyforhillary.com looks like it's got some bigtime web talent behind it. She's definitely got some high-end fans of course, but a PAC taking contributions for the purpose of "urging Hillary to run?" Considering how easy it is to mask one's involvement in an "unrelated" PAC I would be surprised if this wasn't a very very very early feeler. Get her name out there from the start, play up the 'inevitability' aspect like 2008. On the other hand she did make a pretty definitive statement about taking time off when she left SoS. Whether that means approximately 3 years is up in the air.
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Jun 17, 2013 21:55
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mcmagic posted:It certainly shouldn't be on policy grounds. Given the field of realistic GOP nominees with plausible chances at the office you can unequivocally say it's based on policy as well. Art of the possible, etc.
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Jun 17, 2013 22:31
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mcmagic posted:I don't buy that the "art of the possible" is to move the party rightward when the presidential electorate is moving leftward. I really don't want to derail into the :worms: that you're heading towards. Maybe in 30 years when the GOP hydra has much fewer heads and it's not a lock with the big two parties for absolutely all intents and purposes. It's almost like there isn't a very relevant part of political history in this country where one major party faded into irrelevance and the major opposing party's internal coalition (that helped it gain prominence as an effect of being a broad farmer-populist party) split up within a generation since they didn't have a 'big bad' to rally against.
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Jun 18, 2013 01:53
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mcmagic posted:This seems like a pretty poor argument to get people to vote for bad dems. I don't see it as a victory in itself to have someone with a D next to their name in the white house if they are going to continue to move the Overton Window rightward. I'm still waiting to hear why I should "salivate" with the idea of Hillary in 2016 from a policy basis or anything other than "she's not an evil republican." You do realize that if the Dems keep moving to the right, the GOP "hydra" isn't going to say "wow look we better move leftward" they are going to eat that ground and continue to move the goal posts. How do you think Mitt Romney's health care plan goes from "the personal responsibility option" to "evil socialism"? The same way the GOP went from 1994 to 2012.
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Jun 18, 2013 11:04
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mcmagic posted:You're just talking about blue team beating the red team without acknowledging how far right the center of debate has moved in that time. The GOP's 1996 presidential nominee's platform is pretty much where the DEMOCRATS are 17 years later. The right has won on policy grounds in that time period. You're just indulging in detached idealism without considering what happens when people stay home on election day because Mike Gravel didn't win the primary. It isn't a bunch of Democratic governors passing anti-choice, anti-worker, bigoted legislation in the states, it's a bunch of 2010 GOP fuckasses who rode in on the backs of butthurt idealists who didn't vote because DADT wasn't repealed yet and PPACA wasn't the goddamn NHS.
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Jun 18, 2013 12:31
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