Election 2010: Teabaggin' the Ds & Rs

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Penske 2.0

Based on recent polling, their competency at managing public perception of what they have (and/or have not accomplished) is less than competent. Remember this is less about good governance or statesmanship than political victory(ies).

This is the kind of self-referential hokum that makes the news so hard to watch. The polls put Obama and the Democrats exactly where you would expect, given the circumstance (the economy, two years into a presidency). As Adder said yesterday, Obama polls where Reagan did at this point. But a lot of people have something invested in needing to ignore this -- the media need to sell ads, conservatives want to believe that Obama's platform is unpopular -- so they do.

eta: or maybe it was Gatti

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

i wrote a big long post where i said what i read him to have said. do you read it differently?

read this part again:

it seems like he's saying obama was able to get votes from some people who have racial baggage in 2008 and he needs to reassure them.

he might be saying it for bad reasons- to tell white indeps they should feel that way, i don't know- but in a way he's insulting white indeps (i think somewhat accurately FWIW). He does imply a slur against blacks on the way to the insult.

and you were initially less likely than I to paint the TP'ers as racists, but that didn't put you "to the right of me". in fact by saying "to the right" you sort of reinforced my point. "more forgiving of racism" or "less willing to tag someone as racist," may be qualities of a lot of Rs, but they aren't official party planks.

(1) Brooks is not writing for conservatives. He's writing for the Platonic ideal of a NYT reader.

(2) As to your last point, I didn't say "to the right," I said something about what is perceived to be to the right, exactly because I was trying to avoid saying what you have now quoted me as saying. There is a convention that when one uses quotation marks, the words inside them are actually what was said, not something different. I think it's a pretty useful convention.

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

He did not ram through the bailouts. The bailouts were started under Bush. And anyone who argues against them should consider their cost, which is projected (assuming AIG remains a sinkhole) to be somewhere in the area of $50bil. I don't think $50bil is a lot to spend to save the country from spiraling into an economic abyss.

I don't like the bailouts, but there was no choice. Wall Street owns this country, and you know what? It's our fault for giving it to them. Fuck them? Fuck us. It takes two to create a credit based, negative-savings rate society. One asshole to take on absurd lending risk, another asshole to borrow beyond his means. We bailed out ourselves as much as Wall Street, but being the small-minded, petty, shithead culture we are, we now need People to Blame.

Some of them were (i.e., the banks). Others were not (i.e., Chrysler). But the facts are not important. The public believes that the bailouts are Obama's and they don't like them. Agree with you on the rest.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

Ask yourself why you think it has been incompetent. Because that can't possibly be an unbiased assessment.

You can disagree with what they have tried to accomplish, and you can question their willingness to compromise, but they have been extraordinarily successful in achieving their goals, and enacting their campaign agenda.

That you can label that "incompetent" is rather amazing.

I think Obama is branded incompetent in large part for the same reasons Bush was.* Both are neophytes and it's an easy blunt criticism to suggest lack of experience holds his admin back from finding that magical policy which would fix our economic woes.

The competence demanded there is, of course, unrealistic, bordering on fantastic. The structural problems causing high unemployment are insurmountable, at least from a policy-fix perspective. Bush papered them over with a "let them eat credit" housing-based salve and a couple weak stimulus plans. Obama is now forced to build Keynesian bridges to nowhere.

*Yes, there are many racists who assume a black president is automatically incompetent, but it's nowhere near the majority. But hearing from many Obama haters on a regular basis, I've found most think he's simply unseasoned and out of his depth. I personally believe he's a bit green, and more cynical politician than statesman, which manifests itself in stupid shit like that horrible HCReform bill, a disaster he forced through for the sole purpose of being able to say in 2012, "I said I'd do HCReform and I did."

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Of course, his opponent in the election was born abroad. We've had some fairly cosmopolitan presidents with some fairly fancy backgrounds.

Like who? Who grew up in various parts of the world (and not just born on a military base)?

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I think Obama is branded incompetent in large part for the same reasons Bush was.* Both are neophytes and it's an easy blunt criticism to suggest lack of experience holds his admin back from finding that magical policy which would fix our economic woes.

This, plus the unfortunate facts that government has limitations and man cannot control nature. Was Bush's response to Katrina lackluster at best? Of course, but even if it was improved 1000%, I still doubt the result would have been drastically different. Same analysis on the BP oil spill.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

Some of them were (i.e., the banks). Others were not (i.e., Chrysler). But the facts are not important. The public believes that the bailouts are Obama's and they don't like them. Agree with you on the rest.

I have news for you: Bush would've been forced to bail out Detroit. And he'd have done it. We could not allow 1 million jobs tied to that industry to evaporate and drag us into 12% official unemployment. Again, spending $50bil to avoid financial disaster was not a bad purchase.

And I'm getting tired of hearing about the poor bondholders who were illegally wiped out in that bailout. When exactly did bonds become automatic guarantees of protection? Every investment has risk. A bondholder in a house of cards like GM is a fucking fool. Fuck him. If he wants to cry about getting wiped out, my response is, WTF were you doing buying that shit? Did you not peruse at least one of the decade of articles in every finance section of every newspaper discussing how dire GM's finances were? How fucked the company's HC costs were? How fucked up and incompetent its management was and how utterly out of touch with consumers its product development was? Caveat emptor. You took a shitty risk and got burned.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

This, plus the unfortunate facts that government has limitations and man cannot control nature. Was Bush's response to Katrina lackluster at best? Of course, but even if it was improved 1000%, I still doubt the result would have been drastically different. Same analysis on the BP oil spill.

Some of the stupidest criticisms of the last decade would be (in no order):

- Bush was responsible for Katrina being worse than it was;
- Bush's continuing to read a children's book when the towers were hit on 9/11 shows he was dumbfounded and incompetent;*
- Obama was responsible for making the BP oil spill worse;
- The banks alone caused the economic meltdown;
- Barney Frank, Fannie Mae and Clinton alone caused the economic meltdown;
- The economy would've rebounded but for HCReform's passage;
- Obama is a closet socialist;
- Obama is anti-business

These things are not true.

*This might be Michael Moore's most cynical bit of PT Barnum sleaze, and it shows how objectively stupid many Bush haters were that such a narrative took hold.

[sgtclub]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I have news for you: Bush would've been forced to bail out Detroit. And he'd have done it. We could not allow 1 million jobs tied to that industry to evaporate and drag us into 12% official unemployment. Again, spending $50bil to avoid financial disaster was not a bad purchase.

Yep. Although the $50 billion price tag is limited to TARP and more specifically AIG. The price tag for all the bailouts is far higher. Fanny/Freddie alone are several hundred billion and counting.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

Yep. Although the $50 billion price tag is limited to TARP and more specifically AIG. The price tag for all the bailouts is far higher. Fanny/Freddie alone are several hundred billion and counting.

It was understood for a long time that Fanny and Freddie had implicit government guarantees -- it's not like that's something that Obama (or Bush) invented when things went south.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Of course, his opponent in the election was born abroad. We've had some fairly cosmopolitan presidents with some fairly fancy backgrounds.

well, I can't speak for how club read it, but the "usual circumstances" or whatever the quote was, I read as "mixed race." immediately.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

(1) Brooks is not writing for conservatives. He's writing for the Platonic ideal of a NYT reader.

(2) As to your last point, I didn't say "to the right," I said something about what is perceived to be to the right, exactly because I was trying to avoid saying what you have now quoted me as saying. There is a convention that when one uses quotation marks, the words inside them are actually what was said, not something different. I think it's a pretty useful convention.

you are also more cutting to me when I carry a Jewish avatar. why is that?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

Yep. Although the $50 billion price tag is limited to TARP and more specifically AIG. The price tag for all the bailouts is far higher. Fanny/Freddie alone are several hundred billion and counting.

Yes, Fannie and Freddie have monstrous bailout costs, but just as TARP led to paybacks, over time, a lot of that bailout money will be recouped. You can't freeze the music now and call the request for additional funding a loss any more than you could call a business asking for expansion of its credit line a loss.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The structural problems causing high unemployment are insurmountable,

but Dems come through the rust belt and promise the jobs are coming back, so that becomes one of those promises that adder believes were fully met.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

This, plus the unfortunate facts that government has limitations and man cannot control nature. Was Bush's response to Katrina lackluster at best? Of course, but even if it was improved 1000%, I still doubt the result would have been drastically different. Same analysis on the BP oil spill.

I still don't get what people wanted the government to do about the BP blow-out. In my experience, the people who repeat this charge as if it really says something about Obama are the same people who will happily tell you in other circumstances that the government can't do things nearly as well as private industry and should be privatized. Our government doesn't do deep-water oil drilling. By necessity, BP had to do the work. The only alternative was nationalizing the necessary facilities, something no one thinks should have been done.