Posted on 07/06/2006 5:12:45 AM PDT by Mia T
CARVILLE AGITPROP + THE CLINTON JACKBOOT
As I noted previously, 'the embarrassing need to dispatch longtime clinton operatives, James Carville and Mark J. Penn, to the Washington Post in order to prop up hillary clinton yet one more time,1 confirms what is plainly in the field... and what is doubtless in missus clinton's internal polls: Big problems ahead for the quondam shoo-in.'
But to what end such a silly article?
Maybe it was never about the article at all. Maybe it was all about the title....
HEADLINE-MAKER
While it is generally arbitrary who, the author or the newspaper, is responsible for a title/headline, I would be surprised if, in this case, the title wasn't part of the deal.
'The Power of Hillary' has the whiff of raw FBI files and IRS audits. It has the stink of the clinton jackboot.
TWO MEANINGS
The title is at once obvious and insidious; it is standard clinton.
Both messages only reinforce what we already know: The clintons are arrogant rubes, they are jackboot thugs, they've had a stranglehold on the Democrats--(on all of DC, actually), and hillary is in free fall and the clinton camp is desperate. CARVILLE'S 'Clinton is electable! Clear the way!' BATTLE CRY SPELLS TROUBLE FOR HILLARY
The Post Carville-Penn apologia, full of poses, poll-tested phrases and prevarication is, clearly, missus clinton's response-by-proxy (how else?) to the growing 'dump hillary' movement within the Democratic Party.1a
The Power of Hillary
Oh really?
Then how come missus clinton relies exclusively on the likes of Carville and Penn to answer her critics? How come she never defends herself?1
How come missus clinton submits only to scripted, softball interviews with friendly hosts and prescreened audiences?
How come she routinely quashes the dissent of the people by abusing her Secret Service detail paid for by the people?1b
How come she is answerable to no one, ever?2
There is a difference between being an abusive scold3 and being tough. Missus knownothing victim4 clinton is the very definition of weak.5
The difference with Hillary is the intensity of her support.-- ibid
The difference with hillary is the smallness and parochialism of her support. The difference with hillary is the intensity of the revulsion.6
Pundits and fundraisers and activists may be unsure of whether Hillary can get elected president, but Democratic voters, particularly Democratic women and even independent women, are thrilled with the idea.
The X factor for 2008 -- and we do mean X -- is the power of women in the electorate. Fifty-four percent of voters are female. George Bush increased his vote with only two groups between 2000 and 2004: women and Hispanics. Bush got 49 percent of white female voters in 2000 and 55 percent in 2004. Of his 3.5-percentage-point margin over John Kerry, Bush's increase with women accounted for 2.5 percentage points. The rest came from a nine-point increase among Hispanic voters: from 35 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2004. We believe that Hillary is uniquely capable of getting those swing voters back to the Democratic column. -- ibid
For the same reason Harold Ickes fulminated on C-SPAN.
The election of 2004 confirmed missus clinton's worst fears:
And when the socially conservative Hispanics hear more about the clinton rapes and predations8--hear, specifically, about missus clinton's role9 in them--hillary can kiss their vote goodbye.
While it is unclear who, Carville/Penn or the Washington Post, is responsible for the title, 'The Power of Hillary,' its blaring lack of subtlety--and its insidious second message: (Dare to dump powerful hillary and you'll pay. Bigtime!)--only serve to underscore what jackboot thugs the clintons are and how great the desperation is these days in the hillary camp.
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006
'THE POWER OF HILLARY': THE TITLE
n the rush to publish, I neglected to examine the title. A material omission, in my view. It is the title, The Power of Hillary, that is, arguably, the more important part of the story.
To borrow from H. L. Mencken, the dumb demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he mistakes for idiots; he counts spun heads when he should be not discounting circumambient brains.
PREVIOUS POST
he embarrassing need to dispatch longtime clinton operatives, James Carville and Mark J. Penn, to the Washington Post in order to prop up hillary clinton yet one more time,1 confirms what is plainly in the field... and what is doubtless in missus clinton's internal polls: Big problems ahead for the quondam shoo-in.
"Faugh a Ballaugh!"
THE PITCH
James Carville and Mark J. Penn
Washington Post, 7/2/06
Why are Carville and Penn making such a transparently spurious and insulting argument? They aren't that dumb.
9/11 and the clintons' willful, utter failure for eight years to confront terrorism) were transformative. They caused a political realignment--for all practical purposes permanent--that is not good news for clinton, or for the Democrats, generally.
The white woman, the only real swing voter, the demographic the Democrats MUST get in order to win the White House, has turned red.7
We think she represents the kind of change the country is yearning for: a smart, strong leader-- ibid
hillary clinton is no smarter10 than she is strong.5
'Nuf said.
Oh, one more thing. The title....
hillary-the-person isn't running. The idea of hillary is, the idea of hillary as put out on a daily basis by all manner of proxy, from simple spinner to elaborate Hollywood production.1
QUESTION: When was the last time you observed "the smartest woman in the world"2 partake in our process of political discourse, or, as Charles Kuralt once put it, relish in "the raucous give and take of American democracy?" ANSWER: Never. Hillary-the-person answers to no one.3
Hillary-the-person never shows her face. Hillary-the-person never talks. Part of the reason is substance-- or more precisely, the lack of it: The clintons are a truly banal bunch. But, as the husband amply demonstrates, banality, in and of itself, is not a nonstarter if you have a semblance of style. But, sadly, missus clinton doesn't have that, either.
The upshot of all this vacuity are positive numbers for hillary (such as they are) that are inversely related to appearance frequency, and, more specifically, inversely related to the following mouth variables: magnitude of agape, amplitude and frequency of effluvia.4
The bottom line is this paradox: In order for hillary clinton to have any chance of winning elections, she must all but vanish from the public stage.5
If the problem has already taken root, she plants false news stories about it. (Missus clinton's sorry sock-puppet status falls into this category.) 6
It is only when her power, treasure or freedom appears in imminent danger does she deign7 to put the lie in our face herself.8
by Mia T, 3.22.06
... While America appears not to be ready for a female president under any circumstances, the post-9/11 realities pose special problems for a female presidential candidate. Add to these the problems unique to missus clinton. The reviews make the mistake of focusing on the problems of the generic female presidential candidate running during ordinary times.
These are not ordinary times. America is waging the global War on Terror; the uncharted territory of asymmetric netherworlds is the battlefield; the enemy is brutal, subhuman; the threat of global conflagration is real.
Defeating the enemy isn't sufficient. For America to prevail, she must also defeat a retrograde, misogynous mindset. To successfully prosecute the War on Terror, it is essential that the collective patriarchal islamic culture perceives America as politically and militarily strong. Condi Rice excepted, this requirement presents an insurmountable hurdle for any female presidential candidate, and especially missus clinton, historically antimilitary--(an image, incidentally, that is only enhanced today by her clumsy, termagant parody of Thatcher), forever the pitiful victim, and, according to Dick Morris, "the biggest dove in the clinton administration."
It is ironic that had the clintons not failed utterly to fight terrorism... not failed to take bin Laden from Sudan... not failed repeatedly to decapitate a nascent, still stoppable al Qaeda... the generic female president as a construct would still be viable... missus clinton's obstacles would be limited largely to standard-issue clintonisms: corruption, abuse, malpractice, malfeasance, megalomania, rape and treason... and, in spite of Juanita Broaddrick, or perhaps because of her, Rod Lurie would be reduced to perversely hawking the "First Gentleman" instead of the "Commander-in-Chief."
Mia T, 10.02.05
young, unidentified reporter
THE DECLINE OF HILLARY CLINTON: THE DYNAMICS
Luntz Maslansky Strategic Research presented its findings on the '08 Dem field this a.m. to reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
Their focus groups tested Dem primary voters in NH and IA....
Support for Hillary Clinton "disappeared by the time the night was over, and she won virtually no new converts. Only Edwards faired worse."
ON REJIGGING GALLUP'S LOSING NUMBERS FOR HILLARY
But there are a number of verbal and visual intangibles [They seem pretty tangible to me!] that clearly undermine her presentation, her image, and eventually her support. As with many women in public life, her looks and presentation account for a disproportionate percentage of the reactions she elicits."
More; "The tape of Sen. Clinton that we showed in New Hampshire was not a stump speech but rather a public sit-down interview with Jane Pauley in San Francisco conducted earlier this year. This should have been to her advantage. Maybe it was the interview format that kept her from building momentum, but our primary voter audience was not very impressed.
THE POLITICS OF DUMPING HILLARY (see post 53)
It precedes them: IRS audits (Where IS that unredacted Barrett Report already... and why was it REALLY redacted in the first place?), raw FBI files, trashed reputations, intimidation--both verbal and physical, and, oh yes, the deaths. It matters not one whit whether each and every item on this list is true. That it could be true is sufficient threat: Perception--reputation--IS reality.
So it is not surprising that it took the better part of a year for the Left to summon the courage to dump hillary. Dumping hillary is not a reversible act, you see. Dump hillary and you're on her hit list. For life. Yours... which won't be long and happy if hillary retakes the White House and her repertoire of revenge is for real....
So dumping hillary is not your ordinary finger-in-the-air, go-with-the-flow tactical maneuver. It is a lifetime commitment.
Chris Matthews, David Geffen, Mike McCurry and Leon Panetta were on the front lines making that commitment. They had the guts to dump hillary before dumping hillary was de rigueur.
It is not that they understood hillary clinton is a dud and everyone else on the Left did not. Everyone knows hillary clinton is a dud. It is that they put loyalty to party above loyalty to the clintons, and had the courage to act on that loyalty.
GEFFEN UNLOADS ON HILLARY: 'SHE CAN'T WIN'
Sen. Hillary Clinton should not count on help from Hollywood mogul David Geffen in her possible run for the White House.
Geffen, who was a generous supporter and pal of Bill Clinton when he was president, trashed Hillary's prospects last night during a Q&A at the 92nd St. Y in New York City.
"She can't win, and she's an incredibly polarizing figure," the billionaire Democrat told his audience. "And ambition is just not a good enough reason."
Lloyd Grove reports in fresh editions of the NY DAILY NEWS the audience broke with "hearty applause" over Geffen's comments.
Developing...
J. Bradford DeLong
Too many pundits, usually leftist and privileged, sneer at country music. To these critics, any music created by poor, Southern whites (at least those poor, Southern whites who didn't attend an Ivy League university) must be held in contempt, along with its correlatives: incest, racism and trailer parks.
Hillary Clinton? Who would even know her name were it not for her attachment to a man? Where would she be now if she as a child had to pick cotton from sun up to sun down?
Tammy Wynette stands alone, a legend; and she will be admired wherever people appreciate the honesty of the human experience. Human beings are vulnerable. We all should be thankful to any artist courageous enough to bare her soul on the public stage so the rest of us who are listening and know whereof she speaks might benefit.
December 7, 1941+64
Hillary Clinton's revisionist tome notwithstanding, 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. It is in that light that I make this not-so-modest proposal on this day, exactly 64 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The context of our concern today--regardless of political affiliation--is Iraq and The War on Terror, but the larger fear is that our democracy may not survive.
We have the requisite machines, power and know-how to defeat the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere, but do we have the will?
In particular, do we have the will to identify and defeat the enemy in our midst?
Answerable to no one, heir apparent in her own mind, self-serving in the extreme, Hillary Clinton incarnates this insidious new threat to our survival.
What we decide to do about Missus Clinton will tell us much about what awaits us in these perilous new times.
COMPLETE LETTER
FOOTNOTES:
SEX, LIES AND SOCK PUPPETS
HOW THE CLINTONS ARE HANDLING THE HILLARY DUD FACTOR 4
HILLARY'S COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF PROBLEM
(see descriptor morphs)
'HILLARY'S BIGGEST PROBLEM... SHE'S OLD NEWS'
by Mia T, 6.07.06
The Chris Matthews Show
VIDEO
(SHE HAS ONLY ONE WAY TO GO. AND IT ISN'T UP.)
Luntz Focus Groups The Dems....
March 30, 2006
(ANNOTATED BY MIA T, 6.04.06)
[I can see why Pinch hired you, Anne. Your Alice-in-Wonderland illogic is quintessential New York Times. With 100% name recognition and roughly 10% corruption recognition (thanks in no small measure to your rag), missus clinton has only one way to go. And it isn't up.]
THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE OF ANNE KORNBLUT
by Chris Matthews, Anne Kornblut + Dana Milbank
(with annotations by Mia T), 01.26.06
The problem for Clinton is that she starts with such high expectations. Democrats expect her to be smart, and she delivers. [Suffice it to say, this observation says more about Democrat 'smarts.' ] They expect her to be tough, and she delivers. [There is a difference between being a scold and being tough. Missus knownothing victim clinton is the very definition of weak.]
When we showed a stump speech to the group in Iowa their reactions weren't much better. Focusing on the year 2020 was an innovative approach, [for a clinton, for sure. The clintons always focus on 'today' and on 'clinton'] but she never explained how she plans to get there." [And that's a surprise?]
KARL ROVE'S MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION: MOI
HEAR HILLARY, CHRIS MATTHEWS ET AL.
by Mia T, 2.28.06
BEHEARTED KARL adapted from ilovekarlrove.com graphic
eputation, reputation, reputation. The clintons' reputation--specifically, their reputation for revenge--is, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the immortal part of them and what makes them especially bestial.
DRUDGE REPORT
Thu Feb 17 2005 23:13:00 ET
Clinton Administration Veteran:
"Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life."
My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.... there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.
professor of economics, Berkeley
clinton Administration veteran
Hillary Clinton?
Who would even know her name were it not for her attachment to a man?
Thank you, Gavin McNett, for your tribute to the incomparable Tammy Wynette. (TAMMY WYNETTE, 1942-1998)
IT TAKES A CLINTON TO RAZE A COUNTRY
(viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRORE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton
Dear Concerned Americans,
December 7, 1941+64
Mia T
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRO
RE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005
by Mia T, 11.20.05
|
We need to do better than Hillary Clinton, or the symbolism of a woman as president will be marred by electing a woman who has done almost as much to inflict mistreatment on real-life women as her misogynist husband.
Candice Jackson
To better understand why this move is fatal for missus clinton, we must go back to November 8, 2004, which is exactly six days after the re-election of George W. Bush.
The venue is Washington Journal (C-SPAN).
Enter Harold Ickes, looking weirder, more Ichabod-Crane-on-crank, than usual. Looking weirder still when one remembers that Harold Ickes is a strictly behind-the-scenes sort of guy.
Only something very important could have coaxed Harold Ickes onto center stage....21
Forgoing the standard niceties, Ickes launches into his planned tirade. He accuses Bush of terrorizing white women to get their vote.22 (The way he carried on, you would think he was accusing the president of rape or something.)23
"If you look at white women, and I think that was the key to this election, Kerry won 45% based on the exit polls--but they're generally in agreement--Kerry won 45%, Bush won 55% of white women.
By contrast, Bush won only 45% of white women in 2000, so he upped is percentages by 10 points.
In 1996, bill clinton won 48% of white women compared to Bob Dole's 43%.
That is a huge, huge difference. I don't think you can lay all that at the doorstep of moral values.
I think that this president unabashedly and abjectly took the issue of terror and used it to terrorize... white women."
HEAR HAROLD ICKES
Now fast forward to October 11, 2005. Susan Estrich, alignments adjusted upward--ALL alignments--is on Hannity and Colmes. She is there to huckster The Case for Hillary Clinton, 24 both the book and candidate.
Estrich's spiel turns her recent dire warning to the Democrats ("The clintons are sucking up all the air. Get them off the stage!" )25 on its literal head.26 (Air? Who needs air when you have a clinton?)
ICKES + ESTRICH PROVIDE ROADMAP FOR HILLARY DEFEAT (oops!)
Susan Estrich attempts to tie the fate of all women to the fate of the hillary clinton candidacy in a cynical attempt to get the women's vote.
She argues that hillary clinton is the best chance, probably the only chance, for a woman president in our lifetime.
The false and demeaning argument and offensive gender bias aside, someone ought to clue in Susan Estrich. Gender feminism requires as its token a functional female.
So why is Susan Estrich making such a transparently spurious and insulting argument? She isn't that dumb.
For the same reason Harold Ickes is fulminating on C-SPAN.
The white woman, the only real swing voter, the demographic the Democrats MUST get in order to win the White House, has turned red.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2004 presidential election, a journalistic consensus emerged to explain George W. Bush's victory. Despite the sluggish economy and deteriorating situation in Iraq, voters supported Bush primarily because of his values. One prominently featured exit poll question showed "moral values" to be the most important issue for voters, ahead of terrorism, Iraq, and the economy. Backlash against the Massachusetts court ruling allowing gay marriage and attraction of Bush's appeals to Christian faith helped bring out socially conservative voters and cement Bush's second term. This explains why Bush won Ohio, for example, where an anti-gay marriage proposal was on the ballot. However compelling this story might be, it is wrong.
Instead, Bush won because married and white women increased their support for the Republican ticket....
In this article I briefly account for the factors behind Bush's rise in the state-by-state popular vote between 2000 and 2004. This is not the same as identifying who elected Bush. That sort of analysis would put responsibility on white men since they voted 61-38 for Bush and comprise almost half of the active electorate. Instead, I focus on what changed between 2000 and 2004. In this view, it is white women who are responsible because they showed more aggregate change.
Identifying a cause for this shift looks for an explanation also in things that changed in the past four years. For example, John Kerry was not exactly Al Gore, so differences between Bush's two opponents could be a factor. But I suggest that such differences are dwarfed by a much larger intervention: the attacks of September 11. Turnout was up in 2004 because the perceived heightening of the stakes after 9-11 and because of intense competition between the candidates in a small number of battleground states. Higher turnout also appears to have helped Bush slightly. But it was the shift of married white women from the Democratic camp to the Republican camp that gave him the edge in 2004.
Post Election 2004: An Alternative Account of the 2004 Presidential Election
When it comes to electing our first female president, we can do better than Hillary Clinton.
Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine
Washington Journal
Nov. 8, 2004
C-SPAN
The election of 2004 confirmed missus clinton's worst fears:
9/11 and the clintons' willful, utter failure for eight years to confront terrorism) were transformative. They caused a political realignment--for all practical purposes permanent--that is not good news for clinton, or for the Democrats, generally.
Next installment...
THE ROADMAP FOR DEFEATING HILLARY
BarryC.Burden
Harvard University
The Forum, Volume2, Issue 42004 Article2
burden@fas.harvard.edu
WHY HILLARY MUST NOT WIN. WHY HILLARY CANNOT WIN.
ICKES + ESTRICH PROVIDE ROADMAP--oops!--FOR HILLARY DEFEAT)
Mia T, 12.10.05
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006
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Mia T. Bump
thanx, E.G.C. :)
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thanx, bmwcyle :)
thank you :)
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