"With the presidential election only 3 weeks away, John McCain faces a stark choice: Will he go down in history as a principled conservative who lost an election standing on his convictions? Or..."

"... will he go down as an opportunist who lost while bringing out the darkest elements in American politics?... After 8 disastrous years of Republican rule under George W. Bush, all of the tides of history point towards a Democratic victory on November 4th. Obama’s principle [sic] obstacle to the presidency has been whether a majority of Americans were ready to accept him as Commander in Chief... McCain’s campaign believed that their only chance was to change the subject from the economy and make Obama scary and unacceptable, a man who 'pals around with terrorists.' In the face of the vast economic crisis, that strategy appears to be failing, turning off moderates who want answers to their problems, even as it may be firing up the base. More disturbingly, McCain’s strategy is bringing out the dark underbelly of American politics — a strain of hate-filled nativism and racism that always lurks just below the surface of parts of the American political psyche. Historian Robert Hofstadter called it 'the paranoid style in American politics.' This strain is showing itself in increasingly angry crowds at Palin/McCain rallies which yell 'terrorist' and 'off with his head' about Obama. Even McCain himself appears to be taken aback by the virulence of his crowds’ reaction, partially defending Obama over the boos of his own supporters. Since it was the Palin/McCain campaign that had unleashed these forces with its implications that Obama was sympathetic to terrorism, John McCain has reached the point of political schizophrenia. John McCain is now at a crossroads. At this historical moment, he has virtually no path to win the presidency. The question is whether he will lose with honor or lose with disgrace. Will his legacy be like that of his Arizona Senatorial predecessor Barry Goldwater, who ran a campaign of conservative principal in a liberal year and lost in a landslide, only to see his principals [sic!] come to power 16 years in the form of Ronald Reagan? Or will his legacy be like some combination of Richard Nixon, Robert Dole and George Wallace, one of a man whom, in his overweening ambition for victory, took the low road and tapped the dark forces of American politics to his own everlasting shame and dishonor?"

From a HuffPo column published 3 weeks before the 2008 election. I thought it was interesting to read in the context of the McCain post mortem.

Those questions at the end make me want to ask: Is Trump the dark legacy of McCain?

"Pres. Trump says he's 'ready to meet' with Iran 'anytime they want to' and says there would be 'no preconditions.'"

Pres. Trump says he's "ready to meet" with Iran "anytime they want to" and says there would be "no preconditions."

"I would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet. I don't know that they're ready yet, they're having a hard time right now." https://t.co/5LhyfYAB1q pic.twitter.com/gAo4edtWNR

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 30, 2018

I'm seeing lots of reactions like this:

Trump, asked whether he'll meet with the president of Iran, says he'll meet with any leader without preconditions.

Republicans, at one point, attacked President Obama for saying he would meet with the president of Iran without preconditions.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 30, 2018

But I'd just like to say:

1. Trump is like Obama in many ways. Not in all ways, obviously, but click my "Trump is like Obama" tag for more examples of this phenomenon.

2. I remember when Obama made his statement that he'd meet "without preconditions" with Iran (and  Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea). It wasn't when Obama was vying with the GOP candidate. It was in July 2007, when he was fighting to distinguish himself in the field of Democratic candidates in this debate:



It wasn't Republicans that got on his case! It was Hillary Clinton and her supporters. Here's what I wrote at the time which makes it crushingly clear the opposition to Obama was about Hillary:

Trump reaching out to Duterte and Kim Jong-un — isn't it like what Obama said in the CNN/YouTube debate of July 2007?

Here's Obama, saying "the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them... is ridiculous":



Transcript:

The Clintons have "been through enough" Trump reportedly says, and Kellyanne Conway confirms that his administration won't pursue a criminal investigation.

This sounds like the right approach to me. I don't like the victor in an election using his new power against the person he defeated. I said the same thing about the idea that Barack Obama should pursue criminal charges against George W. Bush. You might remember me standing up to forcible pushback by Jane Hamsher (of FireDogLake) back in September 2008 (who couldn't believe that I, a law professor, didn't believe in enforcing the law to the last letter):



As for the Clintons, don't forget that House Republicans have had their investigation going for quite some time. If Trump really did want the Clintons prosecuted, it might make the best sense to look as though it wasn't his agenda at all, but a longstanding effort in Congress that is simply taking its proper course. But now that Hillary Clinton has suffered the shocking defeat in the election, will the House keep up that work? I see a report from November 13:

Following Donald Trump’s Election Day win, GOP legislators in the House will no longer focus their energies on investigating Hillary Clinton, according to Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy....

“Look, I’m the majority leader, I set the agenda,” McCarthy told Fox News. “The agenda is going to be about job creation, it’s going to be about reforming and repealing Obamacare. It’s going to be on infrastructure. That’s the focus that this election was about.”...

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, pledged to press on with investigating Clinton just two days before Trump’s surprise win in the general election. “We’re going to keep after this until we get to the truth,” Chaffetz told Fox News. “We don’t have it yet.”

"In ’08, they saw me coming, but I was a guy named Barack Hussein Obama coming up against the Clinton machine, so no way!"

"So they weren’t focussed on me, and I established a connection. Then came the stuff: Ayers and Reverend Wright and all the rest. What I’m suggesting is that the lens through which people understand politics and politicians is extraordinarily powerful. And Trump understands the new ecosystem, in which facts and truth don’t matter. You attract attention, rouse emotions, and then move on. You can surf those emotions. I’ve said it before, but if I watched Fox I wouldn’t vote for me!"

That's Barack Obama, talking to David Remnick in "OBAMA RECKONS WITH A TRUMP PRESIDENCY/Inside a stunned White House, the President considers his legacy and America’s future."

And I just want to say: It takes one to know one.

After Trump shockingly won Pennsylvania, we should remember that when Obama talked about "bitter clingers" back in 2008, he was talking about Pennsylvania.

Here's the Huffington Post article by Mayhill Fowler, originally published in April 2008, about a fundraising speech by the candidate Barack Obama. He was speaking in San Francisco, but he was talking about Pennsylvania. And Fowler describes Obama's interactions with people in town hall meetings in Pennsylvania:

In Harrisburg two weeks ago, one person called on by Obama chose not to ask a question. Instead a man who introduced himself as only Dennis told Obama, “Make a speech on patriotism because the Republican Party does not own the flag.” In Wilkes-Barre a few days later, Obama fielded a similar comment from a man who said, “I believe that this nation now has dangerously low levels of patriotism and national pride.... My question to you is How are we going to reestablish America’s reputation to Americans?” 

In other words: Can we make America great again?

At the link, you can read the full text and listen to the audio of what Obama said to the elite-donor types in San Francisco. I'll excerpt some of it and do some boldfacing. The idea is to understand how the Democrats lost Pennsylvania this year:

I'm going to miss this man.

Obama, handing out Halloween candy, sees a tiny boy dressed as Prince, and bursts into "Purple rain, purple rain":



I don't know how long that video will be available on YouTube, considering the infamous take-down notice on the YouTube video of the baby dancing to "Let's Go Crazy," which happened 10 years ago but got the attention of the Supreme Court this week:

The high court hasn't yet granted review of the nearly decade-old dispute between Stephanie Lenz and Universal Music, but on Monday in a strong sign that the justices are at least entertaining the possibility, they invited the U.S. Solicitor General to express the government's viewpoint about this case.

Lenz, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, alleges Universal Music made a misrepresentation of its copyright under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and asserts that Universal Music should have considered copyright fair use before telling YouTube that the background music in the cute baby video was a violation of the music giant's rights. After a long build-up at the California district court, the dispute was tackled in 2015 by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Neither side got everything they wanted and both seek Supreme Court review. I think President Obama's spontaneous beautiful outburst helps the fair use side of the argument.

Wow, I miss Prince and I pre-miss Obama.

ADDED: Here I am on February 18, 2008 — the day I went to see Michelle Obama speak — looking forward to the experience of having the Obamas in the White House.

"President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period," said Donald Trump today.

"Now, we all want to get back to making America strong and great again," but before getting back to that he saw fit to add: "Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.”

Did Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign start the "birther" controversy? The linked article, in the NYT, says:

During the 2008 Democratic contest, Mrs. Clinton’s senior strategist at one point pondered, in an internal memo that was later leaked, the ways in which Mr. Obama’s personal background differed from many Americans. But contrary to Mr. Trump’s assertion, neither Mrs. Clinton nor her campaign ever publicly questioned Mr. Obama’s citizenship or birthplace, in Hawaii.

Is that bait the Clinton campaign should take?

The Clinton campaign signaled on Friday that it does not plan to let Mr. Trump slide on the subject, pointing out that he has falsely claimed that the Democratic nominee was initially responsible for raising the questions and noting that he continued to question Mr. Obama’s birthplace for years after the release of his birth certificate.

This is forcing me to go look it up, because I honestly don't know the answer and I would have left this old issue behind.  I'm going to read a Breitbart article from a year ago, and then a CNN article from last May. After I've done that, I'll form an opinion about whether Trump or Hillary should want to bring this up now.

3 reasons why Donald Trump's "everything is a suggestion" sounds right to me.

He said:

"Look, anything I say right now — I'm not the president — everything is a suggestion, no matter what you say, it's a suggestion. I feel strongly that we have to do something about — when you look at radical Islamic terrorism, we have a president, as you folks know very well, we have a president who won't even use the term for the World Trade Center, he won't use the term. And we have to do something, and you're not going to do something until you know what the problem is."

Why I like that "suggestions" business:

1. Even if he were already the President (other than in the area of foreign affairs and his duties as Commander in  Chief), it is what a President is supposed to do. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution says: "He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient...." That sounds like making suggestions to me. It looks like the opposite of those dictatorial tendencies Trump's antagonists purport to see.

2. It is a complete distortion to characterize the vote for the candidate as a referendum on all the policies he or she has talked about during the election season. In the end, we're forced to vote for someone, but the vote only means that we think this person is better than the other one, and it's unfair to interpret the vote to mean we want all of those policies. For example, I voted for Obama over McCain in 2008 mainly because I thought he was better suited to handle the financial crisis. I did not enjoy seeing his victory portrayed as a mandate for health insurance reform.

3. Presidents do — and should — adjust their thinking as the context changes and new information becomes available. You don't want the President wedded to a bunch of policy pledges that were based on how things looked when he was running for office (including the now-irrelevant pressure to get elected).

Bill Kristol just met with Mitt Romney to try to persuade him to run as an independent candidate for President...

... or at least to support another independent candidate if Kristol is able to rustle one up. (WaPo link.)

Here's the top-rated comment over there:

William Kristol has no shame. Remember this:

"The other journalists who met Palin offered similarly effusive praise: Michael Gerson called her “a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.” The most ardent promoter, however, was Kristol, and his enthusiasm became the talk of Alaska’s political circles. According to Simpson, Senator Stevens told her that “Kristol was really pushing Palin” in Washington before McCain picked her. Indeed, as early as June 29th, two months before McCain chose her, Kristol predicted on “Fox News Sunday” that “McCain’s going to put Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, on the ticket.” He described her as “fantastic,” saying that she could go one-on-one against Obama in basketball, and possibly siphon off Hillary Clinton’s supporters. He pointed out that she was a “mother of five” and a reformer. “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin,” he said. The moderator, Chris Wallace, finally had to ask Kristol, “Can we please get off Sarah Palin?”

Why anybody gives this loser any credibility is an absolute mystery to me. If I were Kristol, I'd be ashamed to show my face in public much less offer political commentary. Loser.

ADDED: Let me add a line so you can see where the left margin is. At least one commenter seems to think I wrote that "Why anybody gives this loser any credibility" business. 

"Mr Obama's catchphrase is 'Yes, you can!' - so why is he telling us Brits 'No, you can't'?"

A headline for a column over at the UK Telegraph.

Mr Obama’s most famous electoral message was “Yes, we can”. His electoral message to the British people is “No, you can’t”.

If we want influence, security, free trade, democracy and the rule of law, we can get these things only by staying in the European Union, he informs us. We cannot contemplate living – as his own country so proudly does – as a wholly independent state....

I've got nothing to say about Brexit. I just want to say that Obama's "Yes, we can" never meant you can do whatever you set out to do, the old can-do spirit. "Yes, we can" was a campaign slogan, and I believe it meant, yes, we can elect Barack Obama. I haven't heard it much in the years since the 2008 election, and in the thousands of messages I've gotten from Obama in the that time, there's been a mix of what we can do and what we can't do — with plenty of can't... plenty of can't in the cant.

I still love the old "Yes, We Can" campaign video. Beautifully done. And it was revealed (by David Axelrod, over a year ago) that Obama thought the "Yes, we can" slogan was corny and needed to be talked into it:

During his campaign for the U.S. Senate, Obama thought that your famous “Yes we can” line was corny. How did you convince him?

Michelle just happened to come by for the first ad shoot, and that was the ad that closed with the line “Yes we can.” He read through the script once, and after the first take he said, “Gee, is that too corny?” I explained why I thought it was a great tagline, and he turned to Michelle and said, “What do you think?” She just slowly shook her head from side to side and said, “Not corny.” Thank God she was there that day.

It shouldn't be pinned on Obama as his general philosophy. So, don't feel singled out, Britain, if he tells you you can't. We can't do a lot of things too.

Why I quit watching the debate halfway through and woke up the next morning identifying strongly with Cruel Neutrality.

Do you remember Cruel Neutrality? It's an attitude I noticed in myself and embraced and branded in March 2008:

Who am I supporting in the presidential contest? You shouldn't know, because I don't know. In fact, I'm positioning myself in a delicate state of unknowing, a state I hope to maintain until October if not November. In the meantime, I will spread the attacks around and give credit where credit is due. I think if you look back, you'll see I've done this in the past week. Nothing is more boring than a blogger's endorsement, and I'm not interested in reading any blogger's day to day spin in favor one candidate or another. I would rather take a vow not to vote in November and to keep track of my pro and con posts and go out of my way to keep the tallies even than to turn into a blogger like that.

So I'm taking a vow of neutrality, but it won't be dull beige neutrality. I think partisanship is too tedious to read. This is going to be cruel neutrality.

In 2008, my cruel neutrality was monitored and verified and:

I'd say I've displayed impressive neutrality, being far more likely to stay neutral than to go either positive or negative. But when I did go negative, it was much more likely to be against Obama, and when I did go positive, it was more likely to be about McCain.

Does it surprise you then to realize that I'm almost surely going to vote for Obama -- the chances are about 89% -- and that through the entire period of the vow it has been more likely than not that I would vote for Obama? It shouldn't!

I did go on to vote for Obama. I voted for him before I voted against him (in 2012). Or... it's more accurate to say: I voted against McCain before I voted against Obama. I'm just not that enthusiastic about political candidates. We're in the middle of the 4th election I've blogged, and as ever, I'm drawn to the distanced observer position. I'm one of those voters who get categorized as "undecided" right up until the final weeks, annoying the hell out of some people who can't imagine what more needs to happen to make you decide.

But unless you're a donor — and I never am (not since young Russ Feingold personally pestered me by telephone and I was too polite to use another method to make him stop) — you don't have to nail it down until it's time to vote. Normally, what happens to me is that at some point, in spite of myself, I perceive that the selection has taken place, and it's because one of the candidates has lost me. I go back into my archive and study my own mind to see "How Kerry lost me," "How McCain lost me," and "Why haven't I done a 'lost me' post [in 2012]?" It's nice to have an archive of indecision to mine for the decision.

Last night, I walked out of the debate at about exactly halfway. Part of it was that 9 Central Time felt very late. I'd been up since 3:30 a.m. I am able to pinpoint my bailout time because this morning I'm reading my son's live blog of the debate, and I see the time-stamp on what I know propelled me out of the TV room:

9:30 [Eastern Time] — After Bush criticizes Cruz, Wallace finally lets Cruz respond. But Cruz doesn't have a substantive response — instead, he whines about how many of the questions have asked the candidates to attack him. Wallace retorts: "It is a debate, sir!" Cruz coyly threatens to walk off the stage if there are too many negative questions about him — an allusion to Trump's absence. [Added later: After I point out that Cruz was being facetious, Alex Knepper says, "I thought he was being serious! I guess not. Didn't deliver the line very well." My response: "It's safe to say that if as savvy a political observer as you thought he was being serious, his sarcasm wasn't effective enough to work on prime-time TV a few days before Iowa."] [VIDEO.]

I hated the argumentative overtalking. The moderators try to control, and they really have to. That's the idea of a debate, imposing some format. But it's a thing these days to bust through the rules and pose as the tough guy who's just got to get the truth out. It's irritating as hell. Either submit to the rules or don't. In that context, a joke about rejecting the debate (like Trump) doesn't work. Cruz wouldn't actually walk away, so the rules applied to him. Trump showed how to say I'm not going to submit to the control of these media moderators. Out or in.

But I stayed in. In my chair, watching the debate, for a few more questions, until the immigration part of the show began:

9:59 — Megyn Kelly plays a long clip show of Rubio in about 2009 talking about how phrases like a "path to citizenship" are "code" for "amnesty." Then Kelly suggests he then supported amnesty once he later became a Senator....

Yeah, I know this problem, and I know Rubio will need to twist and contort to answer, but I don't need to see exactly how. Not after I've been up for 18+ hours. It will all be there on the DVR in the morning. I was out. 9 Central. I called it a day.

I woke up clear headed. I really don't like any of the candidates too much, and I also don't hate any of them. I don't like the expressions of hate toward anyone. I have a certain longstanding aversion to Hillary, but I'm also able to accept that she's the most likely next President, and I'm a solid citizen of the Real World. In my youth, I suffered through LBJ and Nixon. It felt like a horror show. I'm old now, and nobody on the current scene is reprehensible in the LBJ/Nixon fashion. Maybe that's the perspective of long experience, but I just don't feel the emotion.

I'm balanced and distanced. I'm interested in observing the day-to-day details and writing about it with whatever edge and humor and insight happens. I'm not lying. I cannot tell you who I'll vote for. We'll see how things look next fall. I don't even know who'll I'll vote for in the primary... or which party's primary I'll vote in. There isn't one candidate I've x'ed out. Not Cruz? Not Trump? Not Bernie? No!

Going back to old "cruel neutrality" posts, I was struck by one commenter's "armchair analysis... of the character AA plays on her blog" — back in September 2008. Blake said:

I think MM is close to right [that Althouse is a Democrat and wants the Democratic Party to succeed], but I don't think that, even as a Democrat, AA identifies all that strongly with her party.

We can see that with her frequent mention of the sacrifice of feminism at the, uh, hands of Bill Clinton.

I think we see there that her identification as a feminist (as she defines it) is far stronger than party affiliation. Minimally, we see a level of integrity and respect for logic that prevents her from lauding Democrats when they do the things they've attacked Republicans for.

Still, she believes in things she associates with the Democrats like social justice (witness the fracas with the Libertarians [link]). She believes, perhaps hesitantly, that race has a non-zero weight in making her decision.

And we might guess that there's a certain, almost sarcastic identification with the person of her youth, that hippie art student who wouldn't bother with A Man For All Seasons or listen to square music, man. This character is obviously a Democrat, even if her future incarnation is surely too sophisticated to boil down politics into "Democrat Good. Republican Evil."

In that context, "cruel neutrality" wasn't ever about being 50-50, something the more strident here have missed. It simply meant that this character was going to go about her business as she always has, and not close her mind to the possibility of voting one way or the other.

Democrat has always been her starting point; but just as Kerry proved unworthy of her 2004 vote, Obama could prove unworthy of her 2008 vote.

The cruelty part comes in playing Devil's Advocate with her own comfort zone. As MM says, she's inclined to vote for Obama, but she won't give him a free pass. She's not the hippie true-believer any more.

This drives the hyper-partisans nuts, of course, since they need every observation to be balanced by a tu quoque.

As for the performance art/traffic angle, my take is slightly different:

If any of you are familiar with Loudon Wainwright III, you know that he writes all these songs about, essentially, himself. Ultimately, however, and by his own confession, the self that sings about isn't really him, but a more dramatic and interesting version of him.

That's sort-of how I see Althouse. There's certainly a motivation to drive traffic, but only within the parameters of what amuses the real Althouse.

5 cents please.

Ha ha. I'll leave it to you to think about how much of that really feels true to me now... other than to say the phrase that jumped out was "there's a certain, almost sarcastic identification with the person of her youth, that hippie art student...." And I haven't followed Loudon Wainwright III since those days, when — some of you will know what I'm talking about — I went to see him at The Ark.

You know, it was one thing to lose to this amazing, disarming political shooting star Barack Obama.

But to lose to the elderly socialist who's not even especially trying to win, just getting his ideas out there and providing some balance, lest everything slide to the right. That's downright humiliating.

My thought this morning upon reading "Hillary Clinton’s national lead is slipping faster in 2016 than it did in 2008" by Philip Bump in WaPo. Look at this graph!

Let's everybody talk about Trump's "schlong."

1. He's making us do this. He's brilliant at causing the media to revolve around him, and this is a big one. He tossed off a funny word as if he just suddenly thought of it, off-handedly, and now all of us, new and old media, are going to talk about it all day. I woke up this morning, saw the story, and regarded it as my serious duty and amusing pastime to go on about all aspects of the statement that Hillary "got schlonged" by Obama.

2. Is "schlong" a verb? The linguists are activated. Give Trump's schlong some lingual action. Now, Trump knows something about taking a noun and making it into a verb — "verbing" it. People love to take Trump's name — names are nouns — and use them as verbs — as in the Hillary campaign catchphrase "Love trumps hate." She wants to be "love" and to call him "hate"? Does she think love, love is the answer with Putin? Speaking of verbing names, Putin works as a verb — put in — who hasn't thought that sounds like a good schlonging?

3. Trump is making us look at his penis — his use of the word for penis — so he's kind of the flasher here. But it's Obama's penis in the image: Obama schlonged Hillary. Are you tempted to call that racist? Good luck, you fool. You'll have to explain why. Go ahead. Go down that path, you idiot. Trump wants you to fall into that rathole.

4. You know who else's penis we had to talk about — a big fat politician made us talk about that time? Has there ever been a more talked about penis than the penis of the man Hillary Clinton is still married to? Speaking of Hillary getting schlonged. We've had a mental image of it so long that this worked as an Onion headline:

5. The left meme pushed by Think Progress is: "Trump's Astonishingly Sexist Attack On Hillary." But now you've got to explain why it's sexist. As the WaPo piece linked at #2 showed us, Trump used "schlong" as a verb once before and it was to refer to something a woman did to a woman: "I watched a popular Republican woman [Jane Corwin] not only lose but get schlonged by a Democrat [Kathy Hochul] nobody ever heard of for the congressional seat...." As Trump uses the word, if Hillary had trounced Obama, he would have said "Hillary schlonged Obama," just as many of us will say: She fucked him. Women can schlong men, whether they have a schlong or not, and if a woman wants to be President, she'd better have the capacity to (figuratively) schlong men. Trump is surely in the position to explain his use of the word that way. And if you keep up with the "astonishingly sexist" bullshit, he's going to schlong you.

6. A Meadhouse dialogue ensues:

MEADE: "Maybe Hillary has a huge vagina."
ME: "She can store several heads of state in there."
MEADE finds that very funny.
ME: "I don't know if I should put that on the blog."
MEADE: "HA HA HA! OH NO NO NO! When it's men's genitals we're talking about, it's okay, but when it's women..."
ME: "I'm just afraid people don't know the whole 'huge vagina' meme. They haven't seen the 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'..."
MEADE: "You have to protect people from the idea of a woman's genitalia being huge, holding heads of state. 'Oh, what are we doing in here?' 'We're in President Hillary's vagina. She envaginated us.'"
ME: "Wait. What heads are you picturing? Who's in that dialogue?"
MEADE: "Putin. Angela Merkel. And I'm picturing the head of the new Trudeau, because he's so dreamy."

7. Meade wants me to show you this:



Meadhouse dialogue:

ME: "I like 'absolutely everyone can come inside' and taking care of you 'if you're ever frightened.'"
MEADE: "A safe space."

8. As Trump antagonists struggle to portray "schlonged" as sexist, they cause us to think more and more about the question of whether a woman is tough and strong and dominant enough to be President. Yes, most of us think that in theory a woman can be President, but like nearly all men, any given woman is unlikely to have what it takes. We know there's one thing she doesn't have, and that's not literally needed. But all the ideation about what it figuratively means is stirred up as we talk about the subject, which is what Trump is making us do, all by saying one little word and standing back and letting us do all the churning through of meaning. He never needed to say Hillary couldn't be President, but he made other people say things, things that they think will hurt Trump, and what they are saying is affecting the minds of millions of people, massaging our doubts, our resistance, shaping opinions that we don't want to have to talk about, that we know we shouldn't say out loud. Trump's one out-loud word did it all. That one word schlonged us.

9. And isn't it very funny that — in the same speech — Trump posed as the prudish man who thought it wasn't proper to mention that Hillary went to the bathroom:"Where did Hillary go? They had to start the debate without her. Phase two. Why? I know where she went. It’s disgusting. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too disgusting. Don’t say it, it’s disgusting. We want to be very, very straight up." He won't even say "go to the bathroom." That's the kind of straight-up man he is. Straight up. What erectitude! Rectitude. Oh, you disgusting people. Get you head out of the toilet.

10. A list can't end at 9, and I do have one more thing to say. It's a nostalgic look back to simpler times, back before Hillary got schlonged by Obama, when Hillary had full hopes of winning. It was June 2007, and the Hillary campaign had just put out a slick ad. My response, a list of 5 items, had a point, point #4 about Hillary's deployment of phallic symbols:

Bill says "No onion rings?" and Hillary responds "I'm looking out for ya." Now, the script says onion rings, because that's what the Sopranos were eating in that final scene, but I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion that, coming from Bill Clinton, the "O" of an onion ring is a vagina symbol. Hillary says no to that, driving the symbolism home. She's "looking out" all right, vigilant over her husband, denying him the sustenance he craves. What does she have for him? Carrot sticks! The one closest to the camera has a rather disgusting greasy sheen to it. Here, Bill, in retaliation for all of your excessive "O" consumption, you may have a large bowl of phallic symbols! When we hear him say "No onion rings?," the camera is on her, and Bill is off-screen, but at the bottom of the screen we see the carrot/phallus he's holding toward her. Oh, yes, I know that Hillary supplying carrots is supposed to remind that Hillary will provide us with health care, that she's "looking out for" us, but come on, they're carrots! Everyone knows carrots are phallic symbols. But they're cut up into little carrot sticks, you say? Just listen to yourself! I'm not going to point out everything.

"The other party doesn’t want to run against her. And if they do, they’d like her as mangled up as possible."

"And they know that if they leak things and say things, that that is catnip to the people who get bored talking about what’s your position on student loan relief or dealing with the shortage of mental health care, or what to do with the epidemic of prescription drugs and heroin out in America."

Bill Clinton says, and if only Hillary could speak so aptly and succinctly, she'd have the presidency clinched by now. Since we're talking about China state dinners this morning, here are Bill and Hillary at the China state dinner in 1997:



ADDED: As I was working to complete this post my way, Meade — who'd sent me the link to the article — goaded me to look at the last line — which I'd not yet read — because he thought I'd have the same association with it that he had. The last line — which I'm only reading after I copy it here — is:

But when Mr. Zakaria asked if the questions about Mrs. Clinton’s emails were a “Republican plot,” Mr. Clinton resisted the term.

“No, I’m not going there, because that’s what the — it’s not a — a plot makes it sound like it’s a secret,” he said. “I think that — that there are lots of people who wanted there to be a race for different reasons. And they thought the only way they could make it a race was a full-scale frontal assault on her. And so this email thing became the biggest story in the world.”

Meade is out walking the dog, so I can't check if my answer is right, but I know it's right:



"This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."

"I am genuinely intrigued at what appears to be a firing squad being put together aimed at Hillary Diane Rodham, otherwise known as Hillary Rodham Clinton."

"That's her e-mail address at clintonemail.com, HDR, Hillary Diane Rodham.  No mention, no relationship, no mention whatsoever of her husband, Bill.... At any rate, it's stunning, the New York Times, the Associated Press, the New Republic, Politico, it is unprecedented," said Rush Limbaugh, at the beginning of yesterday's show.

Now, one of the things that it could possibly mean... is they don't want her to begin with.  They resent her being forced on them. They resent the idea that the presidency is hers again, just like it was in 2008, just because.... What we're looking at here, ladies and gentlemen, is an actual War on a Woman...

Let's try to keep in perspective what has happened here, and going back some years.  First, they used a young, inexperienced, community organizing, chain-smoking man of color to kick Hillary to the curb in 2008.  In 2008 it was a coronation, remember?  In 2008 it was going to be hers to lose.  In 2008 it was the Democrat Party paying her back for all she had done, subordinating herself to her husband, subordinating herself to the party in order to maintain her husband and his political viability and keep him in office....

We're talking 2016, the next Democrat president... In the normal ebb and flow of events... [t]he media would be trying to sweep all of this stuff under the rug....  Just because her husband spent countless hours with a playboy pedophile flying all over the world, what difference does that make now?  Just because Hillary ruined innocent women's lives to protect her husband who sexually assaulted those women, what difference does that make now?...

"You know, I have, ever since I've been a little girl, felt the presence of God in my life. And it has been a gift of grace that has, for me, been incredibly sustaining."

"But, really, ever since I was a child, I have felt the enveloping support and love of God and I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the holy spirit was there with me as I made a journey. It didn't have to be a hard time. You know, it could be taking a walk in the woods. It could be watching a sunset. You know, I am someone who has [been] talked a lot about my life. You know more about my life than you know about nearly anybody else's, about 60 books worth... some of which are, you know, frankly, a little bit off-base. But I don't think that I could have made my life's journey without being anchored in God's grace and without having that, you know, sense of forgiveness and unconditional love. And I am not going to point to one or another matter. I mean, some of my struggles and challenges have been extremely public. And I have talked about how I have been both guided and supported through those, trying to find my own way through, because, for me, my faith has given me the confidence to make decisions that were right for me, whether anybody else agreed with me or not. And it is just such a part of who I am and what I have lived through for so many years that trying to pull out and say, oh, I remember, I was sitting right there when I felt, you know, God's love embrace me, would be, I think, trivializing what has been an extraordinary sense of support and possibility that I have had with me my entire life."

Now, let's not laugh with too much uproarious contempt. She — and you know who we're talking about — was prodded with an invasive question:

Let's talk about your faith. And we warned people the questions tonight would be pretty personal. 

She is responsible for showing up at the Compassion Forum, "an evening with the Democratic presidential candidates to focus on the issues of faith and compassion and how a president's faith can affect us all."

So I want to ask you. You said in an interview last year that you believe in the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. And you have actually felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on many occasions. Share some of those occasions with us.

Oh, holy hell, no! She couldn't say that, could she? And she'd dug her own hole by having already claimed to have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on many occasions. Was the Holy Ghost embracing her on this occasion?

The reason I'm resurrecting that old religiliciousness is that Hillary's possible 2016 opponent is getting kicked around for saying he would "punt" on some pushy question about religion (an effort to get him to misspeak about evolution). Scott Walker was in London, ostensibly to talk about foreign trade, and "asked... if he is comfortable with the idea of evolution," said "I'm going to punt on that one..." and: "That's a question a politician shouldn't be involved in one way or another."

Imagine letting politicians decline to talk about religion! Imagine sparing them the need to show up at a "Compassion Forum" and blather about God's constant companionship. Imagine getting absolutely serious about the United States Constitution, Article VI, Clause 3:

[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

It's only the bullshitters and hypocrites who can nail these political probes into religious beliefs. That doesn't mean those who say they're "punting" — or it's "above my pay grade" — aren't bullshitting too. It's just that these really are questions a politician shouldn't be involved in one way or another.

"I’m just not very good at bullshitting," Obama bullshitted to David Axelrod.

The specific subject that prompted Obama to disparage his own bullshitting skills was same sex marriage, which — to get elected in 2008 — Obama claimed to oppose based on religion.

Axelrod writes that he knew Obama was in favor of same-sex marriages during the first presidential campaign, even as Obama publicly said he only supported civil unions, not full marriages. Axelrod also admits to counseling Obama to conceal that position for political reasons. “Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’ ” Axelrod writes [in "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics"].

What Obama said was: "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman... Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix." I knew at the time he was lying, didn't you? I don't need an Axelrod book to say so. When Obama made that statement — at the Saddleback Presidential Forum, August 16, 2008 — I was live-blogging:

7:25: Define marriage. It's "the union of a man and a woman," and for him as a Christian, it's "sacred" and "God's in the mix." How about a constitutional amendment saying that? No. The tradition has been to leave this to state law. He admits that there is a concern about same-sex marriage, which he doesn't support, but he likes civil unions. He seems a little robotic intoning this position. I'm sure in his heart he supports full rights for gay people, but obviously, at this point, he can't say it.

And here's something I blogged right after the election in November 2008 (when some people were saying it wasn't fair that Obama's bullshit was used in robo-calls to prompt Californians to vote for Prop 8, which put the ban on gay marriage into the California constitution):

So Obama was instrumental in getting Prop 8 passed. What do you think of that? Some Obama supporters say it wasn't fair to use Obama like that. After all, Obama also said Prop 8 was "divisive and discriminatory." But that's absurd. Obama had to know that his words would be used by opponents of same-sex marriage. He himself is an opponent of same-sex marriage... except to the extent that he isn't, and I certainly think in his heart he's not, but that in his head he knew he had to say he was to get elected.

I don't blame him for this dishonesty. I think it's like the dishonesty of professing a belief in God if you don't have it. You're not going to get elected without that dishonesty, so we can just forget about all the good people who don't lie about such things. They're not going to make it to the presidency. Not in the near future anyway. But you can't have it both ways. You're responsible for the position you avow, and the Prop 8 proponents did nothing wrong using his voice like that. 

"Not much annoys me more than the stereotype that to be liberal is to be full of guilt."

"To be socially liberal, in my view, is to be more mindful of compassion and empathy for others. On the basis of that compassion we choose to make lifestyle choices (taking public transport, boycotting Nestle, going vegetarian, donating to charity for example) and do our bit. But given that humans are full of contradiction between what they should do and what they want to do, there is always some conflict."

Wrote Sunny Hundal in a 2007 Guardian article titled "The guilt-free liberal." I'm looking into the topic of "liberal guilt" after my post earlier this morning in which I rejected Power Line's "liberal guilt" theory of why Brian Williams lied. I said:

I've spent decades deeply embedded among liberals and guilt just doesn't seem to be the central force in their psychology. "Liberal guilt" is some kind of meme among conservatives, and it doesn't resonate for me.

Meade questioned "Is 'liberal guilt' a conservative meme?" That got me searching. My report from decades of embedding amongst the liberals is that liberals think they are good, not bad. They feel like repositories of virtue — "mindful of compassion and empathy for others," as Hundal put it. They tend to guilt-trip conservatives, who are regarded as lacking compassion and empathy.

Meade and I also got into a conversation about the difference between "guilt" and "shame," which would take me a long time to pursue in a blog post, so I'll just quickly recall the anti-Walker protesters who endlessly shouted "Shame! Shame!" Conservatives were supposed to be ashamed of not caring enough about the plight of the unionized public employees. These protesters evinced no shame or guilt about themselves. They seemed to feel ultra-righteous.



That photograph of mine first appeared in a March 2011 post titled "Shame, shame, shame. Where is the shame?" ("Is it in wearing a gray hoodie under a tailored blazer, a little black derby hat, and a smelled-a-fart expression while carrying a pre-printed 'SHAME' sign when the guy marching after you is wearing a windbreaker and carrying a handmade 'TAX the RICH' sign?..."). "Shame!" — by the way — was #5 on my 2012 list of "Top 5 Wisconsin Protests That In Retrospect Sound Like Pro-Walker Protests Against the Protests."

Anyway, back to "liberal guilt." If you Google "liberal guilt," the top hit is a Wikipedia article, but it's not an article titled "Liberal guilt," it's an article titled "White guilt." And the second hit is a 2008 Slate article titled "In Praise of Liberal Guilt." The subtitle says a lot about what made the term "liberal guilt" go viral among conservatives: "It's not wrong to favor Obama because of race."

If you Google "liberal guilt" and "Obama," among the nearly 32,000 hits you get are a syndicated Charles Krauthammer column under the headline "Obama's Speech Plays On Liberal Guilt" [dead link, but this might be the column]; a Mark Steyn post [dead link] on the National Review Online that describes "a Democrat nominating process that's a self-torturing satire of upscale liberal guilt confusions" ; a column by self-styled "crunchy con" Rod Dreher, who suggests [dead link] the mainstream media coverage of Obama indicates that "liberal guilt will work [on them] like kryptonite." Even liberals make fun of liberal guilt. A couple of years ago, Salon coyly proposed [dead link] supplementing the Oscars with the Liberal Guilt Awards and awarding political dramas with "Guilties."

My working theory is that "liberal guilt" got traction as a race-neutral way to accuse people of voting for Obama out of "white guilt" and that the term metastasized into a way to impugn any liberal policy with the idea that it is not rational but emanating from someplace emotional. Of course, those who recast liberal guilt as compassion and empathy are conceding that their predilections come from an emotional place, but they are proud of that, not guilty (or ashamed). Many conservatives react to this prideful confession of emotion by asserting that conservative ideas come straight from the rational mind unclouded by emotion. In my view, that's the most emotive position of all, and I would recommend that conservatives present their ideas as grounded in compassion and empathy, as — obviously — some of them do.

Yesterday, I watched one episode of "The Daily Show" and one episode of "The Colbert Report," and immediately afterwards bought the new books of the 2 authors I'd seen interviewed.

That was weird, although I see the connection to my long-time habit of feeling the need to buy 2 things if I'm going to buy 1 thing. I don't have a problem buying nothing, but 1 seems to require 2.

Here's the video of Matt Bai on "The Daily Show," pushing "All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid."

Here's the video of Walter Isaacson on "The Colbert Report," pushing "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution."