Agggggghhhhh

dajafi wrote:

kopphanatic wrote:Again, what high-level member of the Democratic Party was saying that? What Congressman or Senator?

I think it was pretty much a majority position within the Democratic Party that Bush didn't legitimately win the 2000 election. That said, the difference between holding this view and asserting that Obama wasn't born in the US seems fairly straightforward to me.

Whether you rest that premise on the grounds that the votes were never counted, that ballot design led to a crucial couple thousand votes disqualifying themselves (by voting for Gore and Buchanan), or that thousands of likely Democratic voters were improperly turned away from the polls, the conclusion is that Gore should have been awarded Florida and thus the presidency. That's even before you get to either the fact that Gore won a clear majority of the national popular vote, or that the Supreme Court so evidently had no grounds for their decision other than partisan preference that the ruling included the instruction, "Don't use this as precedent."

People on the left said some crazy $#@! about Bush--the "knew about/ordered the 9/11 attacks" is IMO the wildest and worst. In terms of implausibility and ease with which we can contemptuously dismiss the charge, this seems more comparable to SECRET MUSLIM zOMG than that he shouldn't have been given the keys to the White House based on the likely intent of the Florida electorate, actual or should-have-been.

That's fine, and there are real differences between the two opinions, but Barack Obama isn't the first president this decade who has faced widespread legitimacy questions from the opposing base.

If you want to throw in all the Diebold crap from 2004, and that ridiculous Rolling Stone article about how Kerry really won or should have won Ohio or whatever, it persisted throughout Bush's presidency.

Not to start an argument about the 2000 election, though it looks like we're headed that way, but I see a huge difference between the questions about the legitimacy of the 2000 election and the so-called questions about Obama's legitimacy.

A guy who won via a very controversial and questionable Supreme Court decision vs. a guy who clearly was elected by a wide-margin but who is still facing endless innuendo about his citizenship. Not his political views, or even his personal character. His damn citizenship, from the majority of the GOP, including Senators and Congressmen who should and probably do know better.

And yes, the people that seriously think Bush knew about 9/11 are morons, just like the people that think Obama is a Commie-Nazi Muslim.

Majority of the GOP going off that Research 2000 poll from kos?

At least we can all agree the people campaigning on against mosques are pathetic and morally corrupt. oh wait.

What ever happened to the people who believed Bush intentionally blew holes in the levees in New Orleans so they could get all the Black people out of New Orleans and make Louisiana an even safer Red State than it already is? (And send them to Houston and thus exacerbate some long term demographic problems for the Republicans in Texas which is a much more important Red State than Louisiana.)

No, not that. Legitimate news sources. A different poll comes out every week with more and more people believing that crap.

The Nightman Cometh wrote:At least we can all agree the people campaigning on against mosques are pathetic and morally corrupt. oh wait.

Morals?



Just win baby

dajafi wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:But dajafi, aren't you guilty of celebrating the very decline in political discourse you lamented one post back?

I don't think so. (Or maybe only a little.)

I think most rational partisans would agree that there are people on the other side of the aisle worth taking seriously and possible to engage with. It's even the case that there are folks who come off as eminently sane on certain issues and totally bonkers on others. (Sen. Coburn comes to mind for me.)

Santorum, by going out of his way to all but dehumanize gays, spread himself wide open for this treatment. He deserves every bit of it.

(and of course, kudos)

jerseyhoya wrote:If you want to throw in all the Diebold crap from 2004, and that ridiculous Rolling Stone article about how Kerry really won or should have won Ohio or whatever, it persisted throughout Bush's presidency.

Well, I personally don't--to me, the fact that Bush won 2.5 million more votes nationally renders the Ohio argument moot. (Though I thought it interesting that Christopher Hitchens, who supported Bush in '04 and loathed Kerry, found the arguments that Kerry did win Ohio pretty compelling.)

In any event, I don't think "Bush stole Ohio" was ever as constant or widespread a refrain among Democrats, much less electeds, as Birtherism or secret Muslim stuff seems to be among Republicans. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

dajafi wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:But dajafi, aren't you guilty of celebrating the very decline in political discourse you lamented one post back?

I don't think so. (Or maybe only a little.)

I think most rational partisans would agree that there are people on the other side of the aisle worth taking seriously and possible to engage with. It's even the case that there are folks who come off as eminently sane on certain issues and totally bonkers on others. (Sen. Coburn comes to mind for me.)

Santorum, by going out of his way to all but dehumanize gays, spread himself wide open for this treatment. He deserves every bit of it.

(and of course, kudos)

Thanks PiP... makes sense that you of all people picked up on that. Thought about adding a "see what I did there?"

dajafi wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:If you want to throw in all the Diebold crap from 2004, and that ridiculous Rolling Stone article about how Kerry really won or should have won Ohio or whatever, it persisted throughout Bush's presidency.

Well, I personally don't--to me, the fact that Bush won 2.5 million more votes nationally renders the Ohio argument moot. (Though I thought it interesting that Christopher Hitchens, who supported Bush in '04 and loathed Kerry, found the arguments that Kerry did win Ohio pretty compelling.)

In any event, I don't think "Bush stole Ohio" was ever as constant or widespread a refrain among Democrats, much less electeds, as Birtherism or secret Muslim stuff seems to be among Republicans. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

Though a Demycrat, I'm not much for the "Gore won Florida" business either, though obviously that was a lot closer and a lot more contentious. Gore didn't win his own fuck-ing home state. He deserved to lose.

Bottom line, had more votes. Who cares about any of that other business. Anyway, hows 2010 everyone?

mozartpc27 wrote:

dajafi wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:If you want to throw in all the Diebold crap from 2004, and that ridiculous Rolling Stone article about how Kerry really won or should have won Ohio or whatever, it persisted throughout Bush's presidency.

Well, I personally don't--to me, the fact that Bush won 2.5 million more votes nationally renders the Ohio argument moot. (Though I thought it interesting that Christopher Hitchens, who supported Bush in '04 and loathed Kerry, found the arguments that Kerry did win Ohio pretty compelling.)

In any event, I don't think "Bush stole Ohio" was ever as constant or widespread a refrain among Democrats, much less electeds, as Birtherism or secret Muslim stuff seems to be among Republicans. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

Though a Demycrat, I'm not much for the "Gore won Florida" business either, though obviously that was a lot closer and a lot more contentious. Gore didn't win his own $#@!-ing home state. He deserved to lose.

Possibly Bush's best line ever, when asked about this: "He did win his own state. He won DC."

Whether or not Gore "deserved to lose," he was definitely the choice of a majority of American voters, and almost definitely the choice of a majority of the should-have-been Florida electorate. That he wasn't recognized as such should bother anyone who views democracy from a perspective different than how Al Davis views football.

(Of course, we don't. That's the gag. If we took democracy seriously, pretty much everything about our elections would be different.)

pacino wrote:Bottom line, had more votes. Who cares about any of that other business. Anyway, hows 2010 everyone?

It's alright, I guess, except in all the ways it is an economic disaster, that will presage a political one. Watching the rightward drift of the Republican party, and the corresponding rightward drift of the political discourse in this country, to the point that Bill O'Reilly can be accurately described as a "moderate" or "centrist," has been downright depressing and frightening. For the first time ever, I was really disappointed with my man Mr. President on Monday a week ago, when he punted a real chance to use his office as a bully pulpit on national television. He (sort of) made up for it with the "like dog" comments, but that's about him personally. He needs to prioritize and FIGHT for the policies he finds most important, and his campaign engine, so effective in 2008, needs to be churning and making the sure that the Republicans are truly stuck with the crazy right-wingers they've chosen to get into bed with: people need to know how gleefully someone like Pat Toomey would control every aspect of your personal life, even as I am sure he claims to be a tea-party, small government, Constitution protector.

dajafi wrote:Possibly Bush's best line ever, when asked about this: "He did win his own state. He won DC."

Whether or not Gore "deserved to lose," he was definitely the choice of a majority of American voters, and almost definitely the choice of a majority of the should-have-been Florida electorate. That he wasn't recognized as such should bother anyone who views democracy from a perspective different than how Al Davis views football.

(Of course, we don't. That's the gag. If we took democracy seriously, pretty much everything about our elections would be different.)

One of the things that really rubs me the wrong way in life is how the right has totally appropriated and annexed patriotism, the military, the flag, and many other symbols of America's Americaness to itself. I am a leftish person, but I've always thought it a mistake that the left has allowed the right to too easily identify itself with patriotic discourse, leaving us as the "America haters" more or less by default. My own personal solution to this was not to gripe about the Bush victory in 2000 - there is a system, it produced a winner, he is the president, the end. As such, he deserves the respect due the office. In a similar vein, I always thought the left was shooting itself in the foot when it called him "stupid" or things of that ilk: remarkably, for all the privilege he was born to, Bush managed to project a "regular guy" image. Making fun of him for being dumb was like making fun of 20 million other middle aged white guys who loved their wives, their families, their dogs, and their trucks, and calling them all stupid: what the hell does that get you? And what does it do for political discourse? It keeps everything in the realm of personality politics and takes time and effort away from substantitive and constructive discussion.

Now, I kind of forgot during the eight years Bush was in power about how, for all their calls for "patriotism" and "unity" in times of war, that Republicans would be more than happy - some of them, anyway - to undermine a president's legitimacy at every chance they are given if he is not of their party. I was simply too young to be engaged enough to realize how badly they did this to Clinton, to the extent there were openings for doing so (and also, in the late 1990s, I was a Republican - I even voted for Dole when I was 18 in my first election!). You can't take that sort of stuff lying down, I suppose, and thus there is a temptation to fight fire with fire and give as good as you got when you are the ones out of power, as the Dems were from 2000-2008.

But at some point, this kind of nonsense has to end. I thought McCain and Obama each conducted themselves very well during the 2008 election. I was happy going into it, thinking that no matter which one of them one, we would have a president we could really be proud of, who behaved like someone who was a full-grown adult and had assumed a dignified office, refraining from these stupid fights over who is a citizen, etc. I think Obama, indeed, is a lot like me: someone who is more or less a guy who's not very big into personal conflict, and wished to cool off the rhetoric and find common ground. I know they all say that, and I know it's always bull-shit to a certain degree, but I also genuinely believed that Obama really did mean to try to bring dignity and level-headedness to the political discourse, and, more, really believed he could do it simply by being a nice guy who would listen.

It hasn't worked out that way.

I guess I just wish I were dictator. There would be some real changes around here, starting with the re-institution and absolute enforcement of all equal-time laws. I'm looking at you, FOX News.

Moz, you ever read this board? Many lefties here have nothing but contempt for patriotism.

And dajafi's whole Florida thing is really just guilt because he and his hippie ilk cost Gore the election voting for that no-good puritan.

Make no mistake--the perfect is the enemy of the good, and ideological purity costs elections.

Sore loser - go away Lisa Murkowski.

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/09/08/h ... -tomorrow/

"Sen. Lisa Murkowski is strongly considering mounting a November write-in campaign to keep her seat and could make an announcement as soon as tomorrow, according to a source with knowledge of the situation…"

TenuredVulture wrote:Moz, you ever read this board? Many lefties here have nothing but contempt for patriotism.

And dajafi's whole Florida thing is really just guilt because he and his hippie ilk cost Gore the election voting for that no-good puritan.

Make no mistake--the perfect is the enemy of the good, and ideological purity costs elections.

I understand being suspicious of blind patriotism, of course, as one should be suspicious of blind anything, and always understand that there are two sides to every story. America is not always right, etc.

But there is nothing wrong with promoting this sort of understanding very heavily wrapped in the rubric of "This is the greatest country on earth, but that doesn't mean we can't get better" or something similar. If a sports team gets very good, it doesn't just stop adding new players or looking for new prospects: if it did, it wouldn't stay very good for very long. Life is change nad flux. You have to be ready to constantly renew, replace, and you have to be self-critical, always looking for areas to improve upon, if you want to stay the best. That's how the left should couch their criticisms of American domestic and particularly foreign policy.

My dad is fond of re-quoting a George Will line that he (and George Will) feel sum up the conservative thought process: a lot has changed in the last 400 years, almost all of it bad. Conservatism in social matters is, above all else, unnatural: it seeks to stem the natural process of the passage of time, and the change that inevitably brings. Liberals need to point out that social conservatives want nothing to change ever, and how that is not just a bad idea - it is an impossible idea. It's like wishing never to get old, or being able to fly.