"Just as Teddy Kennedy’s challenge to Carter came at a time of national 'malaise,' now Bobby Kennedy, Jr.’s challenge to Biden comes at a time of national demoralization."

"According to an NBC News poll in January, 71 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, with four in five believing that we’re either in a recession or about to be in one. So, it’s little wonder that Biden’s approval rating is a steady ten points underwater. And another poll found that 56 percent of Americans have doubts about Biden’s 'fitness' for his job. According to an April 19 poll, Kennedy already has the votes of 14 percent of those who say they voted for Biden in 2020. Just as interestingly, Biden has the backing of just 67 percent of those who voted for him; that’s soft support. In fact, primary challenges against an incumbent president are never a good sign for the incumbent—or for the party trying to hold the White House. As we have seen, Teddy Kennedy’s challenge to Carter presaged the Democrats’ loss of the White House in 1980. In 1992, pundit Pat Buchanan challenged George H.W. Bush in the Republican primaries, giving the incumbent a scare in New Hampshire. Bush was renominated, but later lost badly to Democrat Bill Clinton."

 
Writes James P. Pinkerton, in "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Takes on the Uniparty with a Pledge to Put Americans First" (Breitbart).

But I was progressive!

Flashback to Moscow, 1937: “Dear Comrade Stalin: Please tell me what I've done wrong and how I can atone. Here in the Lubyanka, I await your wise judgment.” 2/2 https://t.co/IJk39KGpwY

— James P. Pinkerton (@JamesPPinkerton) June 1, 2020

"A young woman, well known to the New York City-based chattering class, has finally let loose with what she really thinks. 'The white race is the cancer of human history,' she says..."

"'... it is the white race and it alone—its ideologies and inventions—which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.' Has this author discovered some new tweet from Sarah Jeong, the now-notorious new hire at the New York Times? Nope. The quote above dates back to 1967. It’s from Susan Sontag, the chic literary critic. Her words were mostly in response to the Vietnam War, but as we can see, her critique extended far further. We might also add that Sontag later said she regretted her quote—because it was insensitive to cancer victims...."

So begins James Pinkerton in "Social Justice Warriors Are the Democrats’ Electoral Poison/Those who don't denounce the politics of Sarah Jeong will crash and burn just as George McGovern did" (The American Conservative).

ADDED: From Sontag's book "Illness as Metaphor":

The cancer metaphor seems hard to resist for those who wish to register indignation....  D.H. Lawrence called masturbation “the deepest and most dangerous cancer of our civilization”; and I once wrote, in the heat of despair over America’s war on Vietnam, that “the white race is the cancer of human history.”

But how to be morally severe in the late twentieth century? How, when there is so much to be severe about; how, when we have a sense of evil but no longer the religious or philosophical language to talk intelligently about evil? Trying to comprehend “radical” or “absolute” evil, we search for adequate metaphors. But the modern disease metaphors are all cheap shots. The people who have the real disease are also hardly helped by hearing their disease’s name constantly being dropped as the epitome of evil. Only in the most limited sense is any historical event or problem like an illness. And the cancer metaphor is particularly crass. It is invariably an encouragement to simplify what is complex and an invitation to self-righteousness, if not to fanaticism.

I talk with Jim Pinkerton about Weiner... and Wisconsin.

ADDED: Snippet #1: I express sympathy for Weiner and make Pinkerton laugh...

Top ten bin Laden memes.

According to Jim Pinkerton....

Remaining silent is not an invocation of the right to remain silent.

Says the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, Berghuis v. Thompkins.

''Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police,'' [wrote Justice Kennedy for the Court]. ''Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent.''....

''Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent -- which counterintuitively, requires them to speak,'' [wrote Justice Sotomayor for the dissenters]. ''At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded.''

ADDED: Pinkerton predicted it:

I shush Jim Pinkerton.

He's trying to disclose my Supreme Court plot!

A new Bloggingheads — called "Dangerous Minds" — with me and Jim Pinkerton.

This was recorded just a few hours ago. They got it up quick, so it must be good:



Here's a list of the highlighted topics:

The Times Square bomber, immigration, and assimilation
Does fighting terrorism require policing minds?
Jim defends Arizona’s new immigration law
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/02/lena-dunham-wont-return-to-twitter-without-new-code-of-conduct-protecting-women/
Ann reveals her devious Supreme Court plot
Intellectual diversity and a Harvard student’s controversial email

Note that they've got me on the left side of the split screen for this one. With good reason!

"Is Obama under-performing because he’s black?"

That's an ambiguous way to put it!

Jim Pinkerton and Jane Hamsher: The Essence of a Relationship in 45 Seconds.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bissage said...

That’s uncanny!

A girlfriend and I had that exact same dynamic going on.

She too was a robot from outer space controlled by a device that looked like an orchid.

"I think the guy who's sitting pretty at the moment? John McCain."

Says David Corn in this Bloggingheads (with a response from Jim Pinkerton):



(Here's the whole episode.)

"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reminds me a lot of Dukakis."

Jim Pinkerton writes:

In '88, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was leading the Democratic White House hopefuls. On April 12, he debated his remaining Democratic rivals in Manhattan. One of them, Sen. Al Gore, mentioned the Massachusetts prison furlough plan that Dukakis had defended. Under that particular program, criminals - even murderers sentenced to life in prison without parole - had been granted, Gore noted critically, "weekend passes." But Dukakis dismissed Gore: "Al, the difference between you and me is that I have run a criminal justice system. You haven't."...

[Dukakis] had been fatally wounded, politically, by Gore... he just didn't know it....

Pinkerton himself, as director of research for the George H.W. Bush campaign, worked on keeping the weekend passes issue alive, and it destroyed Dukakis.

...Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reminds me a lot of Dukakis. As he was two decades ago, she's from a big state, has a lot of money, is ahead in the polls - and she's been grievously injured. This time, the issue isn't prison furloughs, but driver's licenses for illegal immigrants in her "home" state of New York. Clinton has broadly defended Gov. Eliot Spitzer's unpopular plan, even as most New Yorkers have reviled it....

This issue, like the weekend passes issue, resonates deeply with the voting public, "but not inside the 'nominating wing' of the Democratic Party":

So once again, Republicans are sniffing political blood.

How I'm like Bill Clinton.

I'm really not trying to drag out the Bloggingheads to-do, but one of the commenters, Cyrus Pinkerton, asked this great question:

I reread your blog entitled "Clinton on Fox News Sunday," about Clinton's reaction to one of Chris Wallace's interview questions. What I'm curious about is how you compare your reaction to the "Jessica Valenti breast controversy" comment to Clinton's reaction to what he obviously considered an ambush by Wallace. More to the point, can you explain why you feel your reaction was appropriate and Clinton's was not?

I totally identify with Bill Clinton here. I've never claimed that my reaction was "appropriate." I say at the end of the diavlog that I'm sorry for getting so mad. And I never said that I thought Bill Clinton was a lunatic to react the way he did. He's a smart guy who is good at reading a situation, and he's not a cold fish. He's got some real human warmth to him, and it can take him to some regrettable places. I'm not saying I'm any different. In fact, let me sidle right up next to him and pose proudly.

It's me and Jim Pinkerton on Bloggingheads.TV!

Enough with the Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads. My diavlog is up now. I'm gabbing with the estimable Jim Pinkerton. Topics (with times):

Iraq inspires Arab romanticism (as Isaiah Berlin predicted and Doug Feith didn't) (07:13) McCain is yesterday, Hagel is today. Giuliani tomorrow? (07:57) Romney's ecumenical appeal (02:18) Justice Kennedy begs for love and money (09:33) Britney shaves head, Anna Nicole completes career (09:22) Why Edmund Burke would like "American Idol" (04:56) What do women want? Not Bloggingheads.tv? (13:07)

Hey, I'm on BloggingHeads.tv!

Watch me with Newsday's Jim Pinkerton, talking on the split-screen. Topics (and times):

Jim McGreevey and the Church of Oprah (06:10)

Bill Clinton and the vast right-wing conspiracy (13:02)

Bill is to Hillary as Chavez is to Ahmadinejad? (05:11)

Leaking just enough intelligence about the effect of the war (12:15)

Did the Pope bumble into the clash of civilizations? (04:49)

Did Bush? (11:30)

Ann brings out the dead bodies (09:46)

ADDED: If you want just the audio, go here.