For CD:

A young pretender

Short analysis with Midi

Per TED: Empathy distorts our moral judgments in pretty much the same way that prejudice does..

Interesting article in Salon (2016) on how the Clintons destroyed liberalism in the Democratic Party in their pursuit of power and money.

IMHO, these hillbilly grifters helped get Trump elected.

Good article Gog. But it sounds like yet another angry screed put out because the Democrats still can't process the fact that they lost because the country is not ready for a full-on progressive/socialist government. The Democratic Party is more socialist than ever; or its base is. And that was what was rejected by Middle America in the last election.

The Clintons destroyed the Democratic Party, but not in the way the article suggests. I sincerely doubt Bernie Sanders could have been elected either.

The Clintons [and Obama and Pelosi and Reid] destroyed the Democratic Bench. They envision a top-down government and run the party that way. they don't foster governors and mayors and Congressmen to be ready to take over the party leadership positions. Nancy Pelosi is in her 70s and no one has enough prominence in the party to successfully challenger her stranglehold on the senior position in the House. They best the party could do was have the unheard of Tim Ryan run against her. There are no Young Turks in the Democratic party to take over leadership positions. The Dems are represented in the Senate by Chuck Schumer, an aging warhorse who hasn't had an original idea since the Carter Administration.

Their vice presidential candidate, Tim Kaine, was a clown. How he was elected governor of Virginia remains a mystery. The Virginia GOP has got some 'splainin' to do about why they couldn't defeat him.

While I'm not a Ted Cruz fan, he does represent an infusion of new (albeit bad) ideas into the Republican Party, a shakeup of the established thinking, a reason for the party establishment to reevaluate its policies and platforms, whether to refute Cruz or to embrace him. Trump is a newcomer to the party, an unwelcome one, but new thinking and blood. And stalwart, Paul Ryan, is a relative newcomer, especially when compared with Pelosi and Schumer.

Bottom line, the Republicans are showing turnover in their leadership positions while the Democrats are not.

Coney, I think you're being extremely optimistic about the health of the Republican party and conservatism in general. It might well be over. The convention last summer was in Cleveland, but it was the ideological analog of Detroit… Bombed out and depopulated, foaming with lefty rhetoric by lazy habit and mundane impulse, operationally exploited by only the most mundanely self-interested technocrats (e.g., Priebus = Kilpatrick).

Trump is not a political genius. His infection was opportunistic, as was Hillary's presumption that he was the one she wanted to run against. I don't think of him as a political presence of any kind. I'm amused by headlines such as this, collected just now from Google news, but typical of the last four months of national journalism:

Trump's path forward only gets tougher after health-care fiasco

Washington Post - ‎1 hour ago‎

The stunning collapse of the Republican health-care bill now imperils the rest of President Trump's ambitious congressional agenda, with.…

And I'm all like, dafuq? What "ambitious congressional agenda"? How could anyone ascribe that much will to the man, let alone enough thoughtful study to compose an "agenda"? If you had asked him, on Jan 01 2015, how many people were members of the United States Congress, do you think he'd have been able to tell you? Or is it more likely that —if you'd inquired in front of other people— he'd have mocked the size of your penis to distract the room and save face?

This orange baboon has no "agenda" beyond self-aggrandizement and self-dealing. This sentence is the best description of his short attention span.

In the same way that responsible journalists are socially and intellectually unprepared to do anything but shrilly carp about his daily "lies" to a readership that knows what Trump's about and voted for him anyway, they're completely blind to the larger and longer-term implications of such a figure in the Executive. They have no frame of reference, because their egos (and career mechanics) compel them to presume that they know how the game is really played, baby. 'Dog-whistle,' so useful in the Reagan years, is an insufficient analogy. It's like they're trying to listen to Navy semaphore, and they're not up to it. Well, NOW he's learning how things work in this town!, they will affirm.

But as Kagan put it a few weeks ago, this man is not a learning animal." Day traders don't care what happens two weeks from now, any more than they care what promises they made their investors two weeks earlier.




Republicans? Who GAF?

Romney Ryan is about "establishment" as possible. Maybe not as bad as Bitch Mcconnell or Rom himself, but still.

Conan- Agree with you about Bernie, though. It's said that a third of his [primary] voters would have gone for Trump if it were permitted.

Wow. It's a "health-care fiasco" not to be able to overturn in ~60 days what the Democratic Party put in place over years?

Hey, I'm not disappointed that AHCA didn't pass, I'm happy, because it still didn't get the point(s): the whole thing is to pay doctors, and it is unreasonable to pay for what you do not get. I am disgusted that everyone seems to think government involvement is mandatory, and I don't care who's in charge in that case: they suck.

Now, why would you expect that an entrepreneur who has to deal with multiple national governments in the conduct of business wouldn't know anything about ours? It's that pleasing to assume personal superiority, is it?

I don't have any idea what the man knows, but what the treatment of GHWB and GWB showed me is that mass media is simply not going to present anything that the "cool people" deny.

The CNN headline this week is on the order of "Democrats gleeful Obamacare not repealed". That's the best indication they are about the party, not the public, who is still out of luck with that trash.

Coney, I think you're being extremely optimistic about the health of the Republican party and conservatism in general. It might well be over. ~ Crid at March 25, 2017 6:28 PM

I think you're right. The Republicans are not in good shape. The days when people like Reagan would take 70-80% on the first pass and try to get the rest later are gone. Today, die hard political partisans, like the House Freedom Caucus, demand all or nothing. It's not enough to replace most of Obamacare and reduce the debt by billions, all must be attained in one fell swoop or obstruct.

Today's politicians, right and left, are too busy making ideological statements to actually govern the country. Our politics is identity based, not governing based. And like the old Weimar Republic, which fell into this same pattern, we're not going to like what comes out of it.

Paul Ryan is one of the last of the politicians in Congress who is trying to govern, not make a statement with every vote. He's doomed, both in trying to govern and in getting reelected. His constituents will pillory him for compromising with Democrats. The budget compromise with Patty Murray almost cost him reelection and the Speakership.

Supposedly Obamacare was based on a plan proposed by a conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, and Republicans refused to consider it because it was being implemented by a Democratic president. And Democrats refuse to do anything to have a say in its replacement. Better to obstruct than to be part of a Republican endeavor.

"Die-hard conservatives thought If I couldn’t get everything I asked for, I should jump off the cliff the the flag flying — go down in flames. No, if I can get 70% or 80% of what it is I’m trying to get, yes, I’ll take that and then continue to try to get the rest in the future." ~ Ronald Reagan