As noted earlier, this penguin endorsed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama after comparing their two health care plans and finding Obama's to be... well... mendacious. Oh fuckit. He's lying when he says his health care plan will actually work.
Thing is, something has become very apparent these past two weeks, which is that, as a politician, Hillary, well... uhm... sucks. That's the best way to put it. She just isn't good at this politics stuff, unlike her husband. Meanwhile, Obama is proving that he has the same sort of slickness that Ronald Reagan had. Reagan knew what he wanted his audience to think and feel, and was a trained actor so he could get up there in front of an audience and make it happen. That talent got him all the way to the White House and kept him there. Obama may not be a trained actor, but he has that same slickness to him, that same ability to get an audience to think and feel what he wants them to think and feel.
Now, this might seem like I'm putting Obama down, but Bill Clinton had much the same talent too. It just seems to be mandatory to be more than a one-term President nowdays -- you gotta have some slick to you. While I think Hillary could probably get elected if she got the nomination due to the Republican meltdown of the past few years, my suspicion is that, like Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush (both of whom are thoughtful deliberate people with no slick to them at all), she would end up a one-term President. And we need a helluva lot more than four years to clean up this mess the Busheviks have left.
So I'm going to have to change my mind here. I still think that Obama is a slick liar. But thing is, he is simply executing, and has been executing since he started his campaign, while Hillary is flailing. And I've been reading Andrew Sullivan's "blog" (I don't consider it a blog if it doesn't have comments), and he's been pointing out some real cases where Obama has substance under that slick. Now, I hate to admit that I've been swayed by Sully the Silly, who was wrong about everything in the leadup to the Iraq war while I was right, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day... well, actually, Sully has been right about a lot of things recently. Maybe he's getting smarter in old age, hmm...
-- Badtux the Waffling Penguin
I think there are a lot of good reasons to support Obama. I think he's going to be the nominee, and he would make a decent President. If I vote for a Democrat (and I probably will) I'd happily vote for him.
ReplyDeleteBut I disagree with you: I think Hillary Clinton is a fine politician, and she's executing well. The media, however, is so completely hostile to her that even if she were better than FDR, JFK and Abraham Lincoln put together, we would still be hearing only about her "grating laugh" and "calculating bitchy shrewdness".
Remember that Andrew Sullivan hates the Clintons with a passion that burns with the heat of a thousand suns, and he hates them for being better conservatives than he is. He also has a major hard-on (and I mean this literally) for Obama.
With all due respect, I'm slightly depressed (but not really surprised) that even intelligent, thoughtful people will fall for media propaganda. If the smart people are falling for it, the SHEEP don't stand a chance.
I'm depressed not by who wins the Democratic nomination, but why they win. Remember that once a nominee has been chosen, the narrative will inevitably switch to how wonderful McCain's character is, how authentic he is, and how inauthentic the Democratic nominee is. If the smart people have fallen for it in the primary, the SHEEP will fall for it in the general.
As Obama's nomination appears likely, we can already see the narrative shift to subject him to the sort of insane characterizations and personal attacks that have been applied to Hillary Clinton.
Look at the turmoil inside the Clinton campaign if you think she's executing. She obviously disagrees. The good news is that she has fired those who weren't executing. The bad news is that she'd put them in charge in the first place, and apparently managed them in such a way that they were afraid to come to her to tell her that her campaign was flat broke before she had to find out the hard way.
ReplyDeleteThe Oligarch-owned press is of course a factor in all this too. The Oligarchs hate them some Clintons for some reason, even though Bill Clinton was the best Republican president of the past twenty years. I'm as disconcerted as you to see the Oligarchs chhosing our President. It reeks of William Randolph Hearst telling one of his photographers who, sent to photograph a war, had complained that there was no war to photograph, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war" -- and doing so.
Needless to say, this isn't new in America, it's just easier for us to see. And I agree, now that Obama looks like the heir presumptive he's going to have the oligarchy praising McCain and dumping on him. But Obama has him some slick, like Bill did. The press dumped all over Bill too. It didn't stick -- even at the peak of the impeachment silliness, Bill's popularity never fell below 50%. Hillary doesn't seem to have that kind of political ability to handle a hostile press and still remain personally popular. Obama seems to have a fair share of that ability. I still think Hillary would be a better President than Obama, if all things were equal. But the fact is, whoever gets in will have to deal with the oligarchs coming after any Democratic president tooth and nail. That's going to take some skills that I've seen Obama using -- and haven't seen from Hillary.
- Badtux the Practical Penguin
You could be right. Still and all, Clinton isn't doing all that badly, and every campaign shows huge areas of ineptitude and inefficiency.
ReplyDeleteI still think the biggest difference is that the press is putting Clinton's campaign under a microscope, while Obama's is, for now, getting a free pass (but not for long).
The shit didn't stick against Bill Clinton because Lee Atwater had just died and Karl Rove hadn't yet ascended.
I'm not all that interested in the primary. I think that regardless of whether Clinton or Obama wins the nomination, and regardless even whether they actually become President, the Republican propaganda machine is still going strong. All of this year's election is run-up to 2012, when the fewments hit the windmill with a vengeance.
No one, but no one can come up with an good health care plan, so just get the fuck over it.
ReplyDeleteHillary is just a man with a pussy, like Martha Stewart. A money monger that will lie or cry, whatever works for her.
Politics, ha!!!! It's a monkeys game and they raised you to believe in that system.
But if you had your own planet you would be the monarch. Don't shit me, I know that you would.
Barefoot bum, Hillary is an uptight capitalistic cunt. Just saying.
ReplyDeleteI hear Hillary repeat over and over about how she's got "experience". And then I look back over her record:
ReplyDelete- Complete failure and overreach on health care in the early 90s.
- Wrong vote on Iraq, and doesn't have the integrity to own up to it.
- Wrong vote on Iran, knowing the Bush administration's record for overreach.
- Probable overreach on health care once again, potentially setting the issue back yet another generation.
- Poorly run campaign.
- Wants to "solve" the mortgage mess by freezing ARM rates, effectively having the gov't override the terms of thousands upon thousands of private contracts.
I don't really see her having ever actually accomplished much of anything. Add in the fact that her judgment has been less than stellar, and you've got a poor candidate.
I just called to get a linky, yaknow? You need a nudge, or what? If you already linked me and I didn't notice, put it down to age, galloping senility, and blindness, not necessarily in that order. La Casa de Los Gatos thanks you.
ReplyDelete