I met a friend for dinner this evening at my favorite restaurant in Needham. On my way home to Franklin, I followed a 2000 Toyota Camry through the towns of Dover, Medfield, and Medway. It was plastered with Donald Trump and Scott Brown bumper stickers. I kept thinking, here’s a guy driving a sixteen year old car and he’s putting his weight behind Trump. Of course I did not know his age or circumstances, but if I had to guess, I’d put him in his 40’s and judging by the house he eventually pulled into in Medway, he and his wife are both working hard, trying to make ends meet. She drives late model Dodge. They live in one of the bluest of blue states and it’s clear that they are not living the good life when compared to those in Arlington, Dover, Newton, and on and on where many well-to-do Democrats are happy with the status quo, the ones that supported Martha Coakley and now, Hillary because….well just because….they are Democrats and Democrats stand for gay rights and women’s right to choose and minority rights and now it’s all about transgender students and rest rooms…….all noble causes for certain but my guess is that guy in the 2000 Camry has other things on his mind. It’s likely that his dad got laid off when the local GAF shingle plant closed a while back. Maybe he knows the guys who lost their jobs when Quaker Fabrics closed in Fall River or my guess is that his aunt or uncle worked at Polaroid. Now he and his wife work in retail. He’s at Home Depot and she’s at Burger King. He wonders what all the fuss it about with “equal pay for women” when both he and his wife are just barely over minimum wage. They have no health benefits. They have no 401-K. They have two kids in school. They have no time or money to “re-train” and even if they did, the re-train jobs just pay a buck or two more, if you can get one. And they live in one of the bluest of blue states……..
And you wonder why Scott Brown won? And you want to blame Sanders supporters when Hillary loses?
n/t
so the point is what?
against a popular incumbent Senator who’d also been a popular governor. Regardless of what you think about Brown, it’s a pretty impressive showing for a person who had previously only lived there part time.
If anyone is a reflection on johntmayism, it is E. Warren and bumpersticker man couldn’t even support her.
This is a rather odd diary. It is built off fantasies (“if I had to guess”) that it then turns into evidence. And if fantasy bumpersticker man and fantasy bumpersticker man’s wife are both earning minimum wage, I’d venture that efforts to raise the minimum wage (a completely standard Democratic position now) would have a rather direct impact.
But taking the premise of the post as a given, the likely consequence of their vote, if Trump wins, is that they’ll lose their house in the following economic decline (just like the one that followed the last GOP president) and those bumper stickers will be on the back of their new residence. Trump’s economic policies are just wilds claims and empty promises.
but at least no one will be talking about bullshit like gay rights and womens’ right to choose and minorities and this new stuff about bathrooms.
‘Murica!!
If this poor stalked family wouldn’t support Senator Warren over Brown, then why would they ever even think of supporting Sanders?
I want my 5 min back.
When he ran against a party insider who did not have a populist message. That’s the point.
thanks….
Brown spent all of 2009 and part of 2010 running against Coakley. No one thought he had a prayer.
Then spent the rest of 2010 as well as 2011 and 2012 preparing/running for Nov 2012. Anyone but Warren and he would have won that.
By 2013 he needed a break. What did he think his odds were against a 28 year Congressman (with national recognition) in the bluest state in the country? He was already considering his possibilities in NH. Your comment implies that he’s chicken or something. Your earlier comment implied he was a loser. Are you that fabulous that you can throw insults around like that?
John speaks in anecdotes while most of us speak in data. He speaks from personal experiences as a person who has been displaced by globalization and disruption, and some of us make our living in industries that thrive on both while most of us have the higher education to avoid being in the poverty trap and even credit and debt trap most ‘middle’ or ‘working’ class folks find themselves in today. And some of us might still fall into it, as something approaching 60% of households are just a few mistakes away from insolvency.
John says the average worker is not feeling that Hillary Clinton’s solutions are working for them and are attracted to the easy messaging of a demagogue like Trump who blames minorities and immigrants for their sad lot in life. John has never defended that proposition or argued Trump is better for workers. Yet everyone else here responds to his plea with ‘he should get over the primary’ or ‘if he or they were properly educated he would know Clinton is better’.
It’s the responsibility of the candidate and her party to get a simple message out, not the responsibility of the voter to weed through 89 page economic proposals and find the glimmers of hope they are looking for. Her husband felt the pain of this demographic and was the last Democrat to carry a plurality of it. His next successor in office failed to carry that demo due to racial resentment, and an argument could be made that resentment politics overwhelm class based approaches to winning voters. Except that Bernie, a wild haired draft dodging socialist from Vermont carried this demographic.
So again, Hillary is stronger on foreign policy and a more plausible president than Bernie, and at this point, she is the democratically chosen Democratic nominee. The question going forward is how does she adapt Bernie’s more resonant message with downscale voters for the general. We hear a lot about Sanders/Trump voters torn between those two, and if we can make them Clinton/Trump voters it’ll be that much harder for the Donald to win a very closely contested election. We got to get serious about communicating our vision to displaced downscale voters, even if we don’t carry them all.
My issue is that the anecdotes that John speaks in are indistinguishable to me from the similar “anecdotes” that generations of racist and sexist whites (men especially) have been spouting ever since the civil rights era. I’m NOT saying that John is a racist. I’m saying that the fantasies, bumperstickers, and slogans that he repeats obscure and distract from the real experiences he writes from and of.
I reject the premise that because many people repeat similar anecdotes, we should therefore treat them as different from the uninformed speculation (and worse) that they are. If his wife is working, she SHOULD demand equal pay for equal work. They have access to health benefits today that they did not have ten years ago, and that’s BECAUSE of the very things this thread-starter objects to. If they are working at minimum-wage jobs, then they should welcome the demands from both Mr. Sanders and Ms. Clinton to raise the minimum wage.
The fact is that the people these anecdotes are about have been ENORMOUSLY harmed by the GOP, and have been helped by the Democratic Party (though perhaps not as much as we’d like). My view is that those who cite anecdotes like this to attack our likely nominee are ventilating a Through-The-Looking-Glass world that I am NOT willing to enter.
I instead invite them to step out of the looking-glass world back into reality.
I drove a very beatup 2000 Town and Country until a year ago. I am not in the demographic assumed in this threadstarter. He mentions Polaroid — anybody with three functioning brain cells who was “caught” when Polaroid finally shut down was, frankly, not paying attention. That company had an obviously dead-end product selling into an obviously dead-end market for at least a decade before the end finally came. I refuse to spend a lot of time agonizing over men and women who — like those who were ultimately laid off in the final collapse of Polaroid — cannot or will not read the handwriting on the walls around them.
It is a small stretch indeed from “wonders what all the fuss it about with ‘equal pay for women’ ” to “women should stay home where they belong instead of taking jobs from men like me”. I understand that this thread-starter doesn’t say that. I ask you to understand that an ENORMOUS number of people — especially men with Trump stickers on their car — DO say that.
I’ve had more than enough expressions of Clinton Derangement Syndrome. I’ve had more than enough screeds attacking our likely nominee because the demographic we speak of doesn’t like the husband chosen by the adult daughter of the candidate. I’ve had more than enough Clinton-bashing that is indistinguishable from the lies repeated ad nauseam by the GOP, Rush Limbaugh, and the morning talk-show crowd during the 1990s.
This commentator has argued that we should not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because she did not divorce her husband after his affair with Ms. Lewinski in the 1990s. Let’s speak candidly now — would ANY commentator raise the same objection if the candidate were a man who chose to stay with a wife who did the same? To me, those kinds of attacks on Ms. Clinton REEK of prejudices that I want no part of.
I think what we have here is a great and growing chasm between irrational, irresponsible, and blindly prejudiced Trump supporters and voters who still believe that reason, discourse, discussion, and objective reality should ultimately prevail. The GOP has been appealing and pandering to the might-makes-right crowd since the 1960s. The emergence of Donald Trump is the obvious and predictable consequence of that strategy.
I do NOT agree that we should embrace the lies and flagrant demagoguery of Donald Trump in order to defeat Mr. Trump.
49% of Massachusetts union households supported Mr. Brown in Tuesday’s voting, while 46% supported Democrat Martha Coakley.
And
The U.S. middle class had $17,867 less income in 2007 because of the growth of inequality since 1979.
And
The Middle Class Has Gotten Smaller In Every State Since 2000
And
Between 2008 and 2013, the number of US households with a net worth of $1 million or more increased dramatically, from 6.7 million to 9.6 million. Households with a net worth of $5 million and $25 million respectively also increased…The nature of this latest recovery suggests that the final nail in the working-class coffin, whose construction has been underway since the birth of neoliberalism, has been secured into place. Despite desperate measures used to pump massive amounts of currency into the economy through QE, virtually none has trickled down to the 99%. It’s like déjà vu, all over again. And again… And again…
Income disparity? Only four states have higher wealth disparity. Big Blue Democratic Massachusetts ought to at least make the top ten in best place to live where we share the wealth…..but nope….we’re #46
So tell me again, what has the Democratic Party done for labor and why should the laborer in the 2000 Camry “vote blue”?
on point. But why let that stop you?
There is income inequality. Hillary Clinton bad. Scott Brown beat Martha Coakley. Hillary Clinton bad.
You wonder why people go all ad hominem on you? It’s too much work to figure out your argument, and if anyone bothers to try, you’ll just throw more invalid crap their way. It’s not worth it. I tell you so in hopes that you’ll change, but you’re like someone who just got religion and can’t stop telling people they have to be born again to be admitted into the Kingdom of Bernie.
The point is that you and somerville tom and all the rest can’t make an argument for a laborer to vote for Clinton aside from “Trump is bad”.
The Democrats, yeah even Obama, have been shortchanging laborers for years.
Clinton promises more of the same……she even stated so.
And the middle class continued to wither on the vine and you don’t seem to care.
You haven’t sufficiently refuted them. She led the fight on health care in the 90s, she has a solid labor voting record, and was perceived to be to the left of her husband. So their administration deregulated the banks and allowed for bad trade deals, agreed. And she voted for a bad was. Agreed. Trump won’t re-regulate banks, he doesn’t have the authority to overturn NAFTA and it wouldn’t stop the bleeding from automation which is worse and irreversible, and he was for the war before he was against it, would surrender Europe to Russia and Syria to Assad not to mention spread proliferation across the planet. Sanders is clearly better on domestic economics. He’s also clearly not on the ballot in the fall. So what should we do? What’s an affirmative case against Hillary that doesn’t elect someone like Trump? Realistically.
and that’s where I had to say bye-bye to Hillary Clinton when she abandoned Universal Single Payer and totally embraced private sector control of health care. He husband deregulated the banks. Her husband bailed out his wealthy pals and called it the “Mexican Bailout”. He husband was all for “Welfare Reform” that was in the least inhumane to the poor and a big favor to low wage employers. I’ve refuted arguments. I keep hearing how she worked hard, it a martyr, wants to do so much….and there are no results.
The Mexican bailout was absolutely the right thing to do. It is in our national interest for Mexico to have a strong economy. The welfare reform he signed came after at least two veteos IIRC of worse proposals. You once again demonstrate amnesia when it comes to the political and economic realities of the 90s.
…that “voted for a bad was” should be “voted for a bad waR”?
And my broader point is that Trump’s all over the place on foreign policy and doesn’t have a consistent position on the issue. She made a bad vote, but nobody else left in the race was in a position to vote on the issue. Sanders voted the right way and is on the record stating so, what is less clear is what he would do with our foreign policy and security now. Cornel West as a main advisor? I respect West on many issues, foreign policy is not one of them.
What we have here is a canonical example of the Gish Gallop.
call(ed) it a negative shotgun. The affirmative makes their case and the negative throws up so many arguments that the affirmative has a hard time dealing with them.
Why should a working man living Massachusetts want to vote for Hillary Clinton and the continued “recovery” from the great recession that all went to the .1%?
Since he’s a complete piece of shit. I have some empathy towards Trump voters so fucked economically that they’d throw the dice on the riskiest proposition ever to be nominated by a major party. And we should have empathetic policies and campaigns to meet them where they are. But he’s no working class hero, that’s a load of bullshit I hope we all can agree on.
the recovery clearly did NOT go exclusively to the .1%. There are plenty of middle class workers who are indeed doing much better than they were during the recession.
Since 1995, Congress has been Republican with the exception of four years. So most of the time Republicans have held the legislative reins and Democrats have principally been in the role of defending.
First off has been the tax code which Republicans have worked to make benefit the upper end of the income distribution. They’ve had to work over Democratic objections. The “Death Tax” campaign, for example, helped no one below the 95th percentile. Republicans have consistently championed smaller government — and that has taken the form of smaller social security checks, smaller unemployment benefits, and small food stamp allocations. Were it not for Democrats, social security would have been privatized by now and a huge swath of the older population would be facing harsh poverty. One might likewise remember that, during the downturn beginning 2008, Republicans pushed for austerity and created a tremendous amount of noise about the sustainability of the national debt. Were it not for Democrats, the downturn would have been considerably worse with significantly more Americans unable to afford Camrys.
There is also the matter of labor law. Republican Administrations consistently turn a blind eye to safety standards, overtime pay, and wage theft. This is something Democratic Administrations are active against. Likewise, there are the efforts spearheaded by Senator Warren to protect how banks treat customers.
A large part of U.S. income inequality is due to the weakness of our labor movement. This is something Republican Governors and legislatures have worked hard to achieve. Breaking the air traffic controllers’ union was after all one of the signal “achievements” of the Reagan Administration and one Republicans everywhere are eager to replicate. Democrats have often worked to protect the right to organize, but they have been losing this battle. Without them, things would have been worse.
Finally, it is not Republicans who are working to raise the minimum wage.
*
Now all of this is freaking obvious to anyone who has been awake and sentient the last decade. So I’m surprised I have to spell it out, but there you are.
because the primary is not over and we have a better option, one that can win against Trump.
…on Clinton not getting the <100 delegates she needs on June 7th or superdelegates switching to her in droves? They can both win against Trump; every serious statistical model shows that.
voted. The primary is over here.
and it doesn’t seem that the upcoming primaries are going to change anything for Sanders. His supporters have mostly stopped giving him money: his campaign staff in CA is smaller than his staff was in NY, he is spending much less on TV ads, and he is not going to post his fundraising totals for May until he is legally obligated to do so in a couple of weeks because he doesn’t want anyone to see how little money he has raised or how little cash he has in the bank. There is a pretty good chance that Sanders will need to lay off a big chunk of his remaining campaign staff after the primaries are over.
but 9/10 of what JTM offers is not even anecdote, it’s BS. It’s blah, blah, blah, Clinton is terrible. Yada, yada, yada Clinton will sell us out to corporate America. It’s tedious and unedifying.
There is no “average worker,” and we don’t need a straw man to back up an anecdote. If we’re talking about the white working class, which you and JTM claim he embodies, their support for Trump is mythical. There’s a reason why we don’t deal in anecdotes and no reason why JTM can’t deal in data.
Who says? Nate Silver for one. So does Andrew Levison. Donald Trump has not yet won the support of a majority of the white working class but he poses a threat that cannot be ignored. Ironically, however, Trump’s candidacy may also actually provide the first major opportunity in decades for Democrats to significantly expand their white working class support. Since the Reagan era the Republican coalition has been held together by a form of conservative identity politics which united both the deeply conservative and the “common sense” sectors of white working class people together with more affluent Republicans as all being “Real Americans” in contrast and opposition to the minorities and liberal ivory tower intellectuals of the Democratic Party. ” target=”_blank”>does Andrew Levison.
This thread is a muddle.
We get complaints about the substance. When we push on the substance, we get the theatrics (that, after all, is all Scott Brown was: a theatrical ringer). It was Nixon who first popularized the notion that the liberal “elites” didn’t like the Silent Majority, those good quiet (white) people who didn’t make noise protesting. And this whole Nixon-inspired line of thinking just isn’t very practical, and it’s even a bit, well, petulant. (“Clinton doesn’t like me because I’m not invited to fundraisers! Boo hoo! I’ll never get over this! Even if it means never seeing single payer in 2000 years!”) It was elegantly designed to get people to vote Republican, and it worked.
I will condemn John May for personal attacks and delusions about Hillary’s electability or legitimacy. I have done so and will continue to do so. I downrate him when he goes overboard like a Bernie bro. She is the nominee since she won the most votes from the most voters. She is substantially more qualified, more capable, and more progressive than Donald Trump. Jill Stein hasn’t won a Lexington election so I wouldn’t waste a vote on her. I like Johnson and Weld but like social security and NATO more.
Most of us are making that calculus. What Hillary needs to do is channel her husband and feel these voters pain and address it. Tell stories, they win elections pie charts lose. And Nate Silver and all the political scientists royally screwed up on the GOP side. There is a confirmation bias that we have against low info voters who are turning out this year and voting for Trump. He wasn’t supposed to win the nomination and it’s not a sure thing he won’t win the president either. Let’s prepare for the worst so we aren’t surprised. That’s all I’ve been arguing. Let’s assume it’s close, it never hurts to over prepared and addressing the real gaps a candidate has. That’s all I’ve been saying. And join the UIP!
Please, tell me what makes her “more qualified? She served two terms as senator and was Secretary of State. Sanders has held more offices for more years. And you call me out for anecdote without data?
…as a policy-oriented First Lady. Not even Vice-Presidents are sure to come to this as prepared as she is.
Big deal. I suppose you’d allow the husband of a brain surgeon to to a craniotomy on you even if he was a plumber by trade. I mean, he was married to a surgeon for years….
Tell me you’d say that Nancy Reagan was also “highly qualified” while you’re at it.
…of calling her a “policy-oriented” First Lady. No, I do not believe that a First Lady who consulted an astrologer to help set her husband’s schedule is remotely equivalent.
Policy that has yet to do a damn thing for labor and the middle class….
What? Unicorns?
It’s one thing to say her policy choices are too centrist for your taste. Join the club. To argue her policy choices aren’t real policy choices or her experience is not sufficient for the office is to delegitimize her. Her critics always have to hold themselves to this standard “would we say this if she were a man”. And the answer here is no. She was as qualified as Elizabeth Warren (lawyer with DC experience) when she led the health care fight and more qualified today for having had 8 robust years on the foreign policy and armed services committee and being America’s top diplomat.
You may dislike her choices in those offices, that’s a fair line of attack. But to argue she’s unqualified parrots many unsuccessful and incoherent right wing attacks that are sexist. She’s qualified. Trump is totally unqualified and that is the general election we have. It might not be the one you want, but that’s the choice.
…(though I categorically reject your characterization above), the point is she was INVOLVED in the work of the presidency and did not just “stay home and bake cookies and have teas” as she once put it. Ditto when she was First Lady of Arkansas, BTW.
…on building a free and fair economy
…on fighting for America’s workers
She also gets consistently high scores from AFL-CIO and other major unions.
Chris you have always seemed to think NAFTA somewhat innocuous, google and read what the AFL CIO says about NAFTA.
The fact that she was so policy oriented is a key reason she was substantially less popular than her predecessors or successors. That’s the entire reason she is controversial. I haven’t always agreed or liked her policy choices, but to argue she isn’t policy oriented is ridiculous.
She served on the Watergate investigation staff, led a legal defense fund in Arkansas, oversaw real policy fights including health care in the 90s and was a senior policy making senator (not a great record-talk about that if you want!) and oversaw a massive executive agency (mixed bag there to-fair game!). But saying she isn’t policy oriented is like saying Elizabeth Warren needed affirmative action to get hired by Harvard. It’s bullshit and pedantic.
It’s a very powerful and critically important job in any political office.
as well you know. Plumbers and neurosurgeons do not bring their spouses along on jobs. They don’t generally ask their spouse’s opinions on how they should perform procedures.
To be sure merely acting as First Lady is not in any way a sole qualification for being president, but there is no question that it gives them an insight into the office that few others have.
….to be president? And if not, why???
I specifically said that “acting as First Lady is not in any way a sole qualification for being president. Your comment appears to ignore that statement.
Acting as First Lady gives a woman a very close insight into what is involved with being President. I think that should be pretty obvious. When you combine that with the fact that Hillary Clinton is much smarter than either Reagan ever was, that she is a trained lawyer who was very active in her husbands campaigns and policy decisions in a way that Nancy Reagan was not, and she comes off as clearly more qualified than Nancy Reagan. When you throw in her years in the Senate, and acting as Secretary of State, then she is clearly many times more qualified than Nancy.
Possibly we’re playing the wrong game here.
You and I, and jconway and mark-bail, and somervilletom and christopher may be trying to assess how progressive Mrs. Clinton is, what her chances of winning the Presidency are, and what sort of President she’ll be especially if faced with a Republican Congress. These are all questions that involve a level of practicality and abstract thinking.
When I pressed johntmay on what practical steps he might undertake to step up economically, the answer I got was that his practical step was to get the Democratic Party to care about white laborers. So I submit that we are not engaging with someone who wants to weigh pros and cons, sort out appearance from reality, factor in history, or understand the current world as it exists. Practicality is not a value here. What we have is more of a tilting-at-windmills operation. Note too the disdain for mere policy elsewhere on this thread.
Given that, one might expect comments to be read not for what they might reveal but rather as springboards for quixotic propaganda efforts. Possibly jconway regards those propaganda efforts as occasionally productive and possibly mark-bail detects some kind of lived experience trying to make sense of this world and make things better.
But whatever it is, it has ceased to be rational discussion.
I agree with everything you write except your closing sentence.
Discussion with this particular participant on this topic has never been rational.
Stop digging.
You’re a good man, and your writing is often solid and on point. Lately it’s been a bit polemical and redudant on these points and it’s making it harder for people to take your narratives seriously. I think it was unfair for people to dismiss the stronger aspects of this post, but you get too personal against Clinton and her supporters in a way that isn’t constructive.
The same argument with the same people over and over can get tiresome, it might be better to focus on a positive policy development for workers like the Verizon victory rather than try and stop an inevitable nomination most Democrats voted for. Not this one (I was in the party when I voted for Sander’s), but many. And their decision should be respected even if you disagree with it.
I used to get this way too-I’ve had beer and broken bread with Tom and we used to go at it often over many topics. Now we’re drinking buddies! Just stick to facts and leave the polemics out of it as best you can. And you’re welcome defend yourself if you still disagree.
Two way street.
They’ve yet to tell me what the Democrats (and Clintons in particular) have done for labor, for the middle class and truthfully addressed the wealth divide. All I hear is standard boring party rhetoric, how “hard” Clinton has worked and “how she is attacked” …and how much she cares…
Seriously….release the damn transcripts.
These are my personal reasons for believing that she is more qualified than Sanders. You may well disagree.
– I believe she is more intelligent than Sanders. She appears to me to be able to speak intelligently on a wider variety of topics than Sanders can.
– She is much more even-tempered than Sanders is. I really dislike his tendency to angrily wave off questions that he doesn’t want to answer or even walk away from the interviewer when he gets fed up. I don’t think that Sanders could have withstood the Benghazi hearings without losing his cool.
– She is a better listener than Sanders. Sanders is great at getting his message out to large groups of people, but not so good at one-on-one interactions even with his own supporters.
– She is much more open-minded and flexible than Sanders is. You may well see that as a bad thing or feel that she is a “flip-flopper”. I personally see it as a good thing.
– She has a much better track record of working with and for others.
– She is ready and able to work with the Democratic Party and help it raise money and recruit candidates for races at all levels and she has a long history of doing just that.
– She has a much better grasp, interest and understanding of foreign policy issues. Sanders was like a deer in the headlights in the first debate when asked foreign policy questions. He actually complained about being asked too many questions about Latin America when he was interviewed on Univision.
– She understands much better than Sanders what exactly is involved in being President. She has seen the office up close both as First Lady and Secretary of State.
Does that mean I think that Sanders is unqualified? Not at all. I just think she is better. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is probably the least qualified major party Presidential candidate anyone has ever seen.
I obviously don’t agree with everything it, but that’s one of the best responses why someone should vote For her I’ve read on this blog this primary.
but we should probably be putting to rest the Clinton vs Sanders comparisons in the very near future.
to win the nomination. Silver actually explained how he screwed up and didn’t make excuses.
The sounds like a defense to me:
It’s one that has informed many eloquent posts in the past and led him to be a big public supporter for Warren and Berwick, even appearing in ads for the latter. He’s an active DTC member which I’ve been chided for not being before bolting the party. I was hoping to draw him back to a reasonable place, we correspond offline and I know he’s lived a hard life and our political economy hasn’t made it easier. He isn’t making it any easier on himself lately, and I would rather read posts that are less vindictive towards Clinton and her supporters.
Working class people being left behind by both parties is a fair point to make. Reaction against globalization is the primary driver behind support for Trump, that’s reality. And Clinton hasn’t done a great job narrating her own side of this campaign, New York magazine, hardly a right wing rag, has several pieces on that this week. That’s reality too.
The way he has been making this point and equating Clinton with all sorts of horrible things isn’t fair to her or her supporters, and it’s led to the hostility you all have had to his pieces this primary. He and his attitude are responsible for that, I agree. But he’s one of us, not a Republican. He needs to realize that fact holds true for Hillary Clinton too.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, it’s a duck.
The walking, quacking, and swimming I see from this commentator recently is Republican — or worse.
Of a story my stepdad told me in 2003, maybe 2004.
He was on his way to the airport when the cab driver started talking about politics. My stepdad is English so the driver asked him how he felt about Dubya. He explained that he wasn’t a huge fan and that between Iraq and everything else he felt Dubya was a pretty terrible President that only looks out for his old Halliburton buddies. They went back and forth on 9/11 and whatever else for a bit until the conversation started to draw to a close.
“I love George W Bush” the guy replied, “he saved me an extra 400 bucks on my taxes. Democrats just want to tax everything.”
“Well in that case” my stepdad began, “I guess I love George W Bush too, because he saved me almost 40 grand on mine.”
I like to think that guy is a Democrat now but to be honest I doubt it.
(I also probably don’t have to remind you that 95%+ R’s voted Yay and 95%+ D’s voted No for those tax cuts)
Blaming the Democratic Party for the death of the middle class is like trying to blame an ER doctor for failing to treat a gunshot wound.
…to GWB saving your stepdad 40 grand on taxes. Please explain.
I think the story demonstrates that the cab driver (presumably a Republican) thought George W. Bush helped him by saving him $400.
I think the stepdad, presumably much better off, shared some reality about who actually benefited from the tax cuts. I doubt that the stepdad in the store actually earned 100 times the cab driver (a cab driver gets about $40K/year. A hundred-fold salary increase is $4M/year) — the irony is that the George W. Bush tax cuts helped wealthy tax-payers far more than cab drivers.
I read the story as exemplifying classical English understatement — often lost on Americans who don’t understand how English culture works.