"... blowing up in its face." John Podhoretz

"Hey, Democrats, where were you? Hey liberals, where were you? The potential train wreck that is the Hillary Clinton candidacy didn’t just become evident last week when ill-chosen words about 25 million “deplorables” and a public near-collapse tanked her polls to make this a tied presidential race.

No, Democrats and liberals, the possibility of Hillary crashing and burning was there from the outset of her candidacy. And yet you stood there and let it happen.

You Democrats and liberals who did not “feel the Bern” but desperately wanted a Democratic president to succeed Barack Obama — you did nothing to prevent the potential cataclysm that is upon you now. Instead, you’ve spent more than a year chortling at Republican failings, expressing disgust at the rise of Donald Trump and convincing yourselves that your ideological tendency is on the cusp of multigenerational rule in the United States."  Podhoretz

-------------

Well,  JP is a conservative, but this is a an interesting piece.  He thinks that the HC candidacy is leading the Democrats and the Left generally into the wilderness.  We will see.  pl

 http://nypost.com/2016/09/17/the-liberal-establishments-clinton-obsession-is-blowing-up-in-its-face/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Podhoretz

Comments

[Fred]

Col.,

"25 million" He left out a zero.
"The dynamic in this country has now become zero-sum. If you’re a partisan ..., you hate.... . "
I think he characterized that correctly. It's certainly true of the establishment of both parties, though I think ultimately the establishment hates the most bi-partisan of all Americans - the Deplorables, -the most.

On a "blowing up" note according to the Mayor of NYC the explosion in NYC, well: "Mayor de Blasio called the explosion an “intentional act,’’ The Establishment dare not call this terrorism. Their party candidate can't stand the heat of a memorial to 9-11 how the heck can she deal with the real thing. I'm sure we'll see millionaire athlete Colin Kaepernick and friends provide another distraction today. I wonder how the Deplorable are going to like that string of events.

[Bill H]

Interesting that HC's response to the "intentional act" in New York is to drowsily repeat several times on her plane that "we must support the first responders." She looked like she had been woken at 3am and could not get it together, and could think of nothing to say other than the talking point which had been given to her.

[hans]

With the Clintons it's an attitude thing; everyone's an enemy until proven otherwise. Be critical, even mildly, and get banished. Started happening to friends of mine back in the 90s, and, from all reports, has continued to today. For the Clintons, it gets so they're surrounded by flatterers.

From the outset, only abject loyalty to their ambition was wanted, and there wasn't anything you held dear they wouldn't sell you out on. 26 years of that takes a toll. And Hill is the most maladroit, most tone deaf pol I've ever come across.

[jsn]

I hesitate to post this, but I think its increasingly important to distinguish Democrats/Liberals from the Left: there is no natural alignment between them.

At the core the two are anathema and historically conservatives have capitalized on this antagonism. To maintain, say monarchy, or whatever materially beneficial status quo is operational, conservatives have seen to it that enough is shared that most people can maintain their self respect and with it respect for that status quo.

If you treat the majority of your population with a modicum of decency, most people will tend apolitical robing the left of oxygen. Liberals are free market ideologues by definition: Liberalism is the invention of 17th and 18th century aristocrats who wanted "freedom" from their monarchical superiors to monetize and extract value in whatever ways capital saw fit with no concern for fairness: "the market knows best". In England, the Crown rallied the population to its side whenever these "utilitarian" utopians made too much of a mess and there and in the US at least, prevented real leftist roots from spreading.

The New Deal, in its prosecution of WW2, layered a veneer of leftism over American capitalism that, while constraining capital from political power, left equity ownership securely in private hands while ensuring a reasonable distribution of its benefits in the form of wages. This arrangement survived until the end of the Cold War when the "regulations" that had ensured most Americans were treated fairly were scrapped and capital could again fully exploit both "market power" and the power of money in politics. HRC, a Liberal Democrat, is running on the ancient, fetid brand fumes of a party that only ever cared about the left for the purposes of silencing the Bolsheviks, and the dogs aren't eating the dog food anymore.

The branches of the two parties that appear to be trying to merge, the "bipartisan" Borg, its Think Tanks and State level minor leagues, in that act are fracturing both: conservatives will never vote for Dollary and the left will never vote Clump, Bernie was the last best chance to put the New Deal veneer back in place and the Party hippy punched him reflexively.

Identity politics is not the left and will only be "leftist" when Black Lives Matter merges with Deplorable Lives Matter. If the Duopoly continues to treat most Americans as poorly as it has in the last 40 years, it just may create real leftism in the United States. It will be ironic beyond words if the Dollary Clump Campaign finally brings the US a real left, but if the US is to prosper again it has to learn to look at Americans citizens as something other than an extractive resource.

[steve]

Hillary is one of the two worst POTUS candidates in my lifetime. On top of that, she is a lousy campaigner. Her losing has always been highly possible. Hope this wasn't news for anyone.

Steve

[apenultimate]

Thank you, jsn--you saved me having to write a similar screed.

HRC is not left, not progressive, and, to my mind at least, not liberal except in the "free market" angle that you describe. She is a neoliberal corporatist, concerned mainly with money and power.

[Former 11B]

Thank you. Whenever Tyler or another right winger starts railing against the "left" and then holds Killery up as an example of the "left", I want to pull whatever hair I have left out of my head.

Lets get this straight right now. She is Center Right and all about the status quo. There is no "left" in the USA that has any power or say in anything. Anybody that comes in here railing against the "left" might as well be railing against the monsters under their bed.

Garbage in, Garbage out. Which is why I spend no time reading anything by anyone who still plays the part of useful fool by spouting that cr@p. Spend your time going after the actual bad actors or go home.

There may be some actual leftist living in N Cali growing and smoking pot but those people have zero effect on anything so sing a different song. I personally hate the democratic party and its establishment consultant scumbags. And I hate the extreme right and its toady's for being so vile towards Clinton when he was president that I actually felt sorry for him at the time.

That's the main reason he was able to do so much damage, because the pure hypocrisy of people like Newt "cheat on my wife why she is in the hospital for cancer" Gingrich that Slick W got a lot of passes he didn't deserve.

I want Trump to go to Washington and fire the whole craven lot of them, then I don't care after that. Its unfortunate he seems to be selling out as well but whatever.

[Out of Steppe]

As a college student during the Carter-Reagan years, I would hear ultra-leftists deride electoral efforts. “The bourgeoisie chooses the president,” they said. A small group of American oligarchs meets and decides, and then the populace holds a fake drama ratifying their choice.

If that’s true, this year’s meeting involved only the suicidal wing of the establishment.

It’s probably too late, but there’s still one scenario by which the more prudent wing of the power elite might save us. They can sub in Joe Biden.

Biden has some behavioral tendencies that some find problematic or creepy – until compared with Trump’s. See Maureen Dowd’s take here: http://www.businessinsider.com/maureen-dowd-barack-obama-election-hillary-clinton-democrats-joe-biden-2016-9

A Biden candidacy and Biden Administration would be the least damaging path forward available to the nation at this late date.

Obama won’t do the right thing. Just as the Clintons left the White House “dead broke,” Obama has a mind to make money. Do you think he’d risk future earnings in a bid to decapitate Clinton Inc.? Nor does Biden himself have the guts or the room to maneuver.

Bernie Sanders does. He should proceed in this order:

1) Privately ask Clinton to withdraw for the good of the party.
2) Hire a team to explore a national write-in campaign. He can’t win this way – the rules are too restrictive. But he can deny Clinton the Presidency.
3) Quietly ask the DNC to force her out and replace her with him. Recent polls back him up. The DNC will refuse and threaten to ruin his “place in history.”
4) Publicly call on Clinton to withdraw for the good of the nation. Simultaneously hold organizational meetings for a write-in campaign.
5) Wait for a week while the DNC ponders this existential threat and begins talks with Biden.
6) If the DNC and Clinton and the power elite can come to an understanding and arrange a dignified transition from Clinton to Biden, withdraw and endorse Biden/Gabbard or Biden/Kaine. If not… ? (That’s a hard one.)

Sanders has done a great service to the nation already. With this mission, he can go farther. He can change the course of history and show the ever-abdicating American elite what leadership looks like. The window is closing fast.

If anybody’s got a better alternative to suicide-by-Trump or suicide-by-Clinton, please air it out now.

[Castellio]

"Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that, one magical day, good luck will suddenly rain down on them – will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down, yesterday, today, tomorrow or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day on their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms. The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way. Who are not, but could be. Who don’t speak languages, but dialects. Who don’t have religions, but superstitions. Who don’t create art, but handicrafts. Who don’t have culture, but folklore. Who are not human beings, but human resources. Who do not have faces, but arms. Who do not have names, but numbers. Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper. The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them."

Eduardo Galeano (1940 - 2015)

[Tyler]

Trump up 7 in the LA Times, +4 in CO, + 5 in Ohio and NM.

Bombs going off in Manhattan and NJ, "soldiers of Allah" committing mass stabbings in MN.

Hillary is promising more of a third world invasion because that's how the Democrats expect to stay in power.

Say hello to President Trump. At least Powers and the rest of the Russophobes will be gone.

[Lesly]

Someone on my FB feed suggested Dems need to generate their own good news. This panicky statement came after agreeing with Clinton about the deplorables. Maybe her campaign can ask the suspicious, and not to mention, ludicrously idealist Sanders voters to generate buzz on behalf of the party's anointed queen?

I think Trump supporters expect him to use his position to enrich himself and accept this. It sounds better than exporting wealth and importing identity under the banner of neoliberalism.

[Tyler]

Former11B,

She is not "center Right". She is an Alinsky disciple and a cultural marxist.

You picked the form of your destroyer, and no amount of sophistry is going to change the fact she's a hard leftist globalist.

[Tyler]

Lesly,

We expect he's going to be President of the United States, not President of the World, and not turn the US into a bazaar/sewage drain for every Turd Worlder who is looking for gimmedats.

[steve]

"I think Trump supporters expect him to use his position to enrich himself and accept this. "

Yup. If he goes through with taxing pass through income at 15% it should help him, his family and other wealthy folks quite a bit. At least he doesn't hide the fact that he intends to make a lot of money out of being president.

Steve

[jsn]

Of whom do you speak? And why?

[jsn]

I wasn't previously familiar with Galeano, but this quote does sum up the NeoLiberal ethos with regard to normal people.

[rjj]

Political Panto -- LOOK BEHIND YOU!

or in this case above you.

Biden!!!!

gnash. rend garments.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

The turning point that put the Democratic Party on the slippery slope leading to its present pathetic state was when the newly elected president Bill Clinton turned the national party apparatus over to his pals in the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC was formed in the wake of the party’s electoral debacle in 1984, when Mondale/Ferraro presidential ticket carried only one state, Massachusetts. During the 70s and early 80s the movement conservatives, following the strategy suggested by soon-to-be-SCOTUS-justice Lewis Powell in then private, now famous memo to the head of the US Chamber of Commerce 1971, had put the Democrats at a significant funding disadvantage. This tilted playing field was perceived by A number of prominent party governors, Congress critters and operatives to have been a major factor in the blow-out, and in response formed the organization for the express purpose of establishing better communications with the business communities to better meet its desires, and thus encourage their largess at fund-raising time. Bill Clinton was not a founding member of the DLC, however he signed up soon after it was stood up and became an enthusiastic participant.

Unfortunately the DLC channeled Willie Sutton when they chose the financiers and traders of Wall Street to be among the first business sectors they approached. They were receptive but also demanding. The DLC folks probably convinced themselves that they could serve two masters: their legacy New Deal base of the lower tiers of the middle class, the working class and the dispossessed on the one hand, and the money bags of Wall Street on the other. But as they became addicted to the revenue flows and as the labor movement became less and less powerful political player the party’s modus operandi increasingly relied on fraud: pitching itself to the legacy base all the while betraying them. But increasingly, that base was catching on, as exemplified by the Party’s voter turn-out disasters of 2010and 2014. And the party poobahs were not helping things by undermining progressive candidates for whom advocacy of the economic interests of the 90 percent were front and center, and occasionally actively working against them. Witness the DC party establishment’s support of Joe Lieberman run for reelection as an independent to the Senate after he’d lost the primary to Ned Lamont.

As my mother used to say, “If you choose to sup with the devil you’d best come prepared with a long spoon.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.#Powell_Memorandum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Connecticut,_2006

[Freudenschade]

(I'm finding it difficult not responding to Tyler's amusing word salad, but a promise is a promise.)

Col.,

Looking at the current poll internals, it seems that some moderate Republicans have returned to the fold. We'll see how Trump's latest off script comments will play, as his perceived extremism is what has repelled the GOP soccer moms.

[ToivoS]

It was clear last November that the DNC had frozen out any other Dem from the big money it takes to win the primaries. This made possible Sanders' incredible run and near upset of Hillary. I think the DNC should be brought up on charges of political malpractice. One beneficial potential of a Hillary loss is her supporters could be purged from the DNC.

[Castellio]

I was responding to a line in your previous post: "... but if the US is to prosper again it has to learn to look at American citizens as something other than an extractive resource."

That reminded me of Galeano's line "... do not have faces, but arms" and I thought to send the whole quote.

I don't think it only captures the Neoliberal ethos towards the "normal", or "deplorable", for the contempt it captures is amply present within the Conservative tradition as well.

In any case, I agree with the intent of your position; there needs to be renewed respect for all of the American people.

And, I also agree, calling Hillary "the left" (let alone "hard left") only makes sense within a an extremely restricted understanding of political options. Such a limited and balkanized understanding now dominates within the US.

[Tyler]

RJJ,

If you think Biden is just going to swoop in and win this thing, I have a bridge to sell you.

[Tyler]

Where's all the people telling me how Somalis were a net positive for MN and that reports of crime and terrorism simply weren't true.

Where are those people who were here pushing this nonsense not too long ago?

[Brunswick]

https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016

it's pretty clear that you don't know your left from your right.

[different clue]

This John Podhoretz article reads like a very sad cry of the heart. If the Rparty had nominated some plausible brand name member, he would not be so sad over Nominee Hillary over on the Dparty side. His big fear is that Candidate Trump will win and make the Rparty into something different than what the Commenterriers and the National Reviewers would have preferred it to remain.

I share Mr. Podhoretz's dismay over Sanders's free giveaway to Clinton on the Server Deal. I would not have expected him to systematically and programatically condemn the private server. But I would have preferred that he give a blank-faced answer to the effect that " the FBI has experts looking into the matter and it would be premature to speculate at this point as to what may or may not be found". But I think he was trying to win gratitude-points from the Dparty Establishment, which of course he did not win. I wish he had not bothered trying.

I suspect Senator Sanders would consider the plan proposed above by Out Of Steppe to be far too complex with far too many moving parts and requiring far too much non-stop energy for Sanders to ever contemplate. But even if he did, and every domino fell just exactly as Out Of Steppe would hope, once the Berners saw their huge effort bait-and-switched into a backing for Biden, whom they like little better than they like Clinton, their bitterness would be renewed and deepened and they would reject the Dparty nominee ( Biden) in even huger numbers than the numbers of them ( us) who will reject Nominee Clinton. " Bern me once, shame on you. Bern me twice, shame on me. Bern . . . Bern . . . won't get Berned again."