Althouse: "We’re all complicated people voting for complicated people. We’re not census subgroups falling in line."

February 10, 2016

"We’re all complicated people voting for complicated people. We’re not census subgroups falling in line."

"I’ll go to the barricades for that imagined gay candidate if he or she has talents I trust, positions I respect and a character I admire. If not, I’ll probably go elsewhere, because being gay won’t be the sum of that person, just as womanhood isn’t where Clinton begins and ends."

Writes Frank Bruni (who is gay) in the NYT in "Feminism, Hell and Hillary Clinton."

I'm quoting this, even though it is utterly banal and shouldn't even be worth saying, and maybe it's not anymore, as we see what's happening to Hillary. But I'm blogging it, perhaps in the hope that we are experiencing the end of an era in which insights like this were published as profundities and bloggers quoted them as if indeed they were. I'm making a show of the perspective I have, a little dance in the Theater of Optimism.

34 comments:

Curious George said...: "...womanhood isn’t where Clinton begins and ends."

Truer words have never been spoken.; 2/10/16, 7:59 AM
MacMacConnell said...: Womanhood is the least of the Grifter's problems.; 2/10/16, 8:03 AM
traditionalguy said...: Will Old Clintons just fade away now? I do wonder whether when she dies, anyone will show up at the funeral.; 2/10/16, 8:05 AM
AllenS said...: South Carolina primary coming up. Hillary will drop the woman crap and go all in for Black Lives Matter More Than Anything In This Universe.; 2/10/16, 8:05 AM
CStanley said...: I agree with AllenS- the racial stuff is going to get very ugly.; 2/10/16, 8:09 AM
MaxedOutMama said...: The only reason people write this stuff is that talking heads have insisted and political tech-pundits have insisted that in fact identity group politics do reign.

That has been the central theory in political campaigns for the last eight years. The insiders of both parties are trying to produce a two-term presidency using different versions of the coalition that produced a two-term Obama presidency.

It may offend us and it may sound stupid right now, but that's exactly what women were supposed to do for Hillary. The fundamental drive behind the draft Warren campaign was that she was a woman. The only reason there is such a push for Rubio is because he is of Hispanic background.

But Obama is an uncommonly gifted politician, and Clinton is not.; 2/10/16, 8:11 AM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Yeah - an end to not letting women, Latinos, blacks, and gays be conservative?; 2/10/16, 8:16 AM
Anonymous said...: CStanley said...
I agree with AllenS- the racial stuff is going to get very ugly.

But who will be the target? The angry old white man or the fairly diverse GOP field?; 2/10/16, 8:16 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Obviously charisma wins out over identity politics, even on the left this year. The two exclamo-Americans Jeb! and Hillary! have been eclipsed by wacky charismatic and authentic characters who are very comfortable in their own skin. Remember, Bush 3.0 was going to run hard as an Hispanic-by-marriage and speak Spanish everywhere he went. And then Donald showed up and flatly stated that Americans should campaign for American votes speaking American English. After a quick Dios mio we haven't heard another foreign word from Bush.

You don't need an exclamation point or a re-re-reintroduction to Americans if you are authentic and comfortable in your skin. This is the year that phonies and posers lose their mojo. Even Old Bill has obviously lost his. He used to be the best at faking sincerity. Now he seems pathetic, like a dog so old it just wants to be on the porch in the sun and it's so mangy no one wants to touch it.

Well, that went longer and deeper than I thought it would.; 2/10/16, 8:17 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: We’re all complicated people voting for complicated people. We’re not census subgroups falling in line.

That is a useful view for the Democratic primary.

It will go down the memory hole once they are competing against Republicans. Then it will be a clear case of misogyny, or antisemitism, or age discrimination. Depending on the candidates in future elections it will be racism or homophobia. Whatever works.; 2/10/16, 8:18 AM
AllenS said...: Drill, she needs an overwhelming black vote. She seems to have lost a lot of the other categories.; 2/10/16, 8:18 AM
Laslo Spatula said...: In the New York Times a Gay Man tells the Feminist Men and Women that it is OK not to vote for Hillary.

Cover is provided. Abandon ship.

I am Laslo.; 2/10/16, 8:19 AM
David Begley said...: The entire election is about Frank Bruni; a rich, liberal, NYC, gay guy.

I hear America singing and it ain't from the mouth of that guy.; 2/10/16, 8:22 AM
Tank said...: Back to Blood.; 2/10/16, 8:26 AM
Brando said...: I don't think the racialists and fauxminists will give up without a fight. Identity politics is all they have!

What's at play here is no serious person can claim that Sanders has a bad record or bad proposals from a feminist-left point of view. So instead of their usual "war on women" theme, the Clintonites are left with "well, a woman president would be historic..." and even that doesn't work much--younger voters know full well that a female president could happen soon, particularly thanks to Obama (after all, if we can have a black president, a woman president isn't hard to picture). So they don't need to settle for Hillary to get even that.

So now they've been outflanked on their own ground--there's really no good reason for a young feminist leftist to not stick with Bernie. And the Clintons haplessly flail around with this "how dare you go with a man!" crap, which backfired.

The real question will be the black vote firewall--if blacks start to realize that Bernie is no worse than Hillary on their key issues, they will abandon ship and then it's over.; 2/10/16, 8:27 AM
Anonymous said...: AllenS said...
Drill, she needs an overwhelming black vote. She seems to have lost a lot of the other categories.

sure, but how to get it. Demonstrate that you are more in tune with BLM that the other guy. But which other guy.

it could be done by making either the face of white evil privilege; 2/10/16, 8:35 AM
Rick said...: CStanley said...
I agree with AllenS- the racial stuff is going to get very ugly.

It may be ugly but it will win her the nomination. An acceptable trade from her point of view.; 2/10/16, 8:38 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: It would seem, despite a truly heroic attempt by the MSM to cover it up, that people realize that Hillary is an utterly corrupt, yet completely incompetent politician whose overriding concern is accumulating personal wealth and power.

And it would also seem that people, especially younger people, reject the notion that despite the above, they should vote for her simply because she identifies as a woman.

Your right, that shouldn't be a remarkable thought. Yet apparently, it is. To some people.; 2/10/16, 8:41 AM
Brando said...: "sure, but how to get it. Demonstrate that you are more in tune with BLM that the other guy. But which other guy.

it could be done by making either the face of white evil privilege"

See, that's where I'm not sure it's going to work so well. Sanders may be a leftist nut, but he doesn't fit into the mold of "evil rich white guy who doesn't care about you" the way the left does to GOP candidates. His only weakness is I don't think he can do the racial pander as Hillary will.; 2/10/16, 8:48 AM
Rick said...: Sanders may be a leftist nut, but he doesn't fit into the mold of "evil rich white guy who doesn't care about you" the way the left does to GOP candidates.

Where do you think the Berniebros meme came from? If you can't target him directly invent a few stories about "supporters" to slime him. Their playbook only has one page.; 2/10/16, 8:52 AM
damikesc said...: Hillary's only stated qualification for office is possessing a vagina. She has provided no other qualifications to date.; 2/10/16, 9:14 AM
jaydub said...: The Clinton campaign reportedly just released the following:

Hillary has long identified as a black woman, and DNA tests have just confirmed her geneology. She is asking for the South Carolina sistahood's support against the old white Jew from New York City who's trying to tell us black folk how to vote.

In a related development, Madeleine Albright is expecte to call a press conference to announce that "once you go black, you'll never go back."; 2/10/16, 9:19 AM
Krumhorn said...: Nothing more appealing than an old angry white hippie cut from the Abbie Hoffman bolt.

- Krumhorn; 2/10/16, 9:22 AM
wildswan said...: In South Carolina in December there were almost zero undecideds among whites or blacks and Clinton was way ahead. But now there are so many undecideds among blacks that if they went for Sanders, he could win. They might go back to Clinton, of course, but seeing through BS is a black specialty while the unbearable weight of permanent BS is a Clinton specialty, it's all she ever is.; 2/10/16, 9:37 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: Referring to Bernie Freakin Sanders

Even though he’s still a longshot to snag the nomination, his candidacy is persuading young voters, women, and progressives that Clinton is in the pocket of big banks and corrupt corporations

That's because she is.; 2/10/16, 9:41 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: Also, I would like to point out that Bernie Freakin Sanders was an independent until last year. He caucused with the Democrats, but did not actually belong to the party.

So Hillary is losing to a guy who joined the party so that he could run for its nomination.

My guess, if Bernie Freakin Sanders garners enough delegates to beat Hillary the super delegates will award it to her anyway.

Good times. Good times.; 2/10/16, 9:47 AM
robother said...: The way to defeat a feminist super villain is, first, get her vagina monologuing.; 2/10/16, 9:58 AM
MaxedOutMama said...: PS: I think the paradigm bust for political insiders is pretty strong. The axiomatic belief that big donors and big money matter ueber alles has been busted wide open by Sanders, as noted by Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-10/clinton-s-loss-to-sanders-exposes-weakness-of-message-and-messenger
What will keep Sanders going is the grassroots financial support he's gotten from millions of Americans who have given to him online and will be motivated by a win. Instead of heading to Wall Street to raise campaign cash, Sanders said in his victory speech that he was holding a “fundraiser right here right now” from the stage where he spoke. Sanders raised $20 million in January—$5 million more than Clinton—without the wear, tear and time of the dozens of fundraisers that Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea Clinton, plus top aides and surrogates, put into it.

Sanders' fundraising success has made it possible for him to match the staffing levels of the Clinton campaign in many places across the country and to outspend Clinton on TV, radio, and the Web.

It's also allowed Sanders's campaign to begin airing television ads on Wednesday in four Super Tuesday states: Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma and two new markets in Massachusetts.

This is not so much of a revolution as the inevitable and often-seen calcification of a power structure followed by irs incompetence followed by the inevitable failure.

It happened in the American auto companies, it happens in politics, it happens in money. It seems to be a feature of human beings acting together.

I would think young black liberal voters would respond to Sanders' message just about the same as young white liberal voters provided it penetrates. There a LOT of young black voters - the US black demographic is on average younger than the white demographic.

In the 1990s, both parties tried to create power structures that blocked insurgent third-party candidates. It seems to me that they blocked the natural evolution of their own parties in doing so, which is creating the OMG! candidacies of this year, which were preshadowed by the Tea Party (not really an R phenomenon), Brat's VA blast a few years ago, and the midterm rolls.

How could political insiders have been so stupid and oblivious? That's the real question.; 2/10/16, 10:03 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: I saw an article this morning about Trump supporters. One of them was a 51 year old woman who had never voted before voting for Trump in the NH primary who stated she had "lost all trust in the system until now."

Meanwhile, the Democrat party is selling young people into debt slavery via the scam of student loans in order to finance the indoctrination institutions

Good times indeed.; 2/10/16, 10:04 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: How could political insiders have been so stupid and oblivious? That's the real question.

For the same reason that people in Pompeii didn't leave their houses and possessions and flock out of the city when smoke started coming out of the top of the mountain.; 2/10/16, 10:14 AM
Rick said...: Ron Winkleheimer said...
So Hillary is losing to a guy who joined the party so that he could run for its nomination.

What a coincidence!; 2/10/16, 10:18 AM
MaxedOutMama said...: wildswan - exactly. A politics based on the firm belief that your electoral base is stupid is a house built on sand.

I know that there are some stupid black people, but how many are regular primary voters?

Sanders' huge electoral strength is that he actually believes firmly, completely and deeply that the fate of the average person in this country matters. Hillary Clinton has been a power/money tick all her life. She heads straight for her preferred host, burrows in and begins to suck. But in the end, no matter what she says, she and hers are the only ones getting fat off the blood meal.

She's going to have a hard time making the case that voting for her is going to make any sort of meaningful change in a young person's life, and the harder she caters to Hispanics, the more she loses black voters.; 2/10/16, 10:20 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: Sanders' huge electoral strength is that he actually believes firmly, completely and deeply that the fate of the average person in this country matters.

I first became aware of Bernie Freakin Sanders existence back in 2008 when he held hearings on the subject of punishing me for my thrift and hard work. He wants to confiscate 401k's and provide everyone with a government pension. Not a great man for economics - or math, but I agree with you on this. In my opinion his ideology is both misguided and paleolithic, but he does seem to actually care about the average person.

The government has been captured by big money interests. Not necessarily a bad thing, if the interests were not both short-sited and globalists.

Bernie, like Trump, both project the image of believing that this thing we have here, this United States, is a good thing and that its citizens' welfare should be the primary concern of the politicians we elect. And not just the wealthy citizens, but the middle class and poor. That free trade and immigration may just not be the unmitigated success that the people who need nanny's and gardeners see it as.

Back in the early 90s when I was much younger, I got a summer job as an unskilled laborer at a construction site to help finance my college education. This was just a couple of years after the 1986 immigration deal that was supposed to trade legalization in exchange for enforcement of the immigration laws.

I remember when I was hired they checked my driver's license and got my social security number to verify that I was a citizen and therefore it was legal to hire me. I remember the guy that hired me mentioning that he could get in quite a bit of trouble for failing to verify my status.

I don't remember that law being changed. Perhaps I haven't been paying attention.

Of course back then a lot of people predicted that the 1986 deal was a ruse. That legalization would encourage even more illegal immigration and that the laws would not be enforced because it would not be in the interests of the powerful to do so.

As we all know now, those people were racists and xenophobes.; 2/10/16, 11:10 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: Frank Bruni is not a complicated person -- he's a standard liberal from NY. Nothing less, nothing more.; 2/10/16, 2:11 PM