Open Thread - Saturday, December 3
I'm taking a break today from my customary tale-telling about life on the East Side of Cleveland to note a post-election event of some interest while including recollections from a related event from 1972.
The Harvard Institute of Politics held its annual post-election debrief of the campaign managers of the major party Presidential campaigns this past week. Things got pretty hot when Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri offered that she was prouder of Clintons' "alt-right" speech than any other moment in the campaign. Her next self-righteous--and laughable--assertion kicked off a heated moment:
"I would rather lose than win the way you guys did," Palmieri said, her voice shaking.
"No, you wouldn't," interjected Conway. "That's very clear today. No you wouldn't, respectfully."
"How exactly did we win, Jen, I'd like to know?" Conway asked, though the question was clearly rhetorical, as she continued.
"We did it by looking at the schedule and looking at, yes, the electoral map of 270, because that's how you win the presidency. And we went places and we were either ignored or mocked roundly by most of the people in this room. But I have a smile on my face at all times."
Ouch.
You can find more tales of brave and righteous Hillary & Co. in the CNN article here or listen to the entire event here.
Headlines about this event reminded me of 1972 when I attended what might have been the first of these post-election forums held by what was then called the Kennedy Institute of Politics. Back then, the Institute of Politics was housed not in the glitzy Kennedy School of Politics complex located in what was the MBTA Red Line yards in the 70s but in a old yellow house next to the Spee Club on Mt. Auburn Street just off of Harvard Square. There were no network cameras or reporters, just students and the gracious hostess, Helen Keyes, who had been a long-time aide to Jack Kennedy.
Attendees included Jeb Magruder (to be behind bars before long) from CREEP, Jack Chestnut (also to be behind bars) from the HHH campaign, the execrable pair of Wattenberg and Kampelman, two of the first neocons, from the Scoop Jackson campaign, and Hart and Rick Stearns from the McGovern campaign.
Magruder sat and grinned through most of the discussion as the Democrats proceeded to go after each other with knives. Wattenberg and Kampelman were especially bitter at their failure to prevent McGovern from being nominated, and when the brilliant Rick Stearns, who just walked over from his dorm room at Harvard Law School for the forum, explained how the McGovernites had finessed the South Carolina test vote just prior to the California delegation vote, those two were apoplectic. They got their revenge quickly, however, creating the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, whose board members read like a list from Dante's 7th and 9th circles:
Les Aspin, Daniel Bell, Lloyd Bentsen, Peter Berger, David Boren, Midge Decter, Tom Foley, Nathan Glazer, Ernest Hollings, Hubert Humphrey, Samuel Huntington, Daniel Inouye, Max Kampelman, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Charles Krauthammer, Irving Kristol, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Joshua Muravchik, Michael Novak, Sam Nunn, Richard Perle, Richard Pipes, Norman Podhoretz, Bill Richardson, Chuck Robb, Eugene Rostow, Ben Wattenberg, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey and Jim Wright
Several of those folks would move on to prominence in the Republican Party while others were instrumental in creating the DLC. Hart, like Magruder, more a pretty face than anything, went on to forge his own centrist trail, while Stearns steered clear of politics from then on and became a federal judge.
One thing was clear back in 1972 and remains as true today: the Left's worst enemies are in the Democratic Party.
Comments
Fun 1972 campaign site:
1972 Campaign
Campaign paraphernalia and even recordings of speeches from each of the candidates, including: McGovern's acceptance speech; announcements from Shirley Chisholm, Fred Harris, Ed Muskie, George Wallace, Pete McCloskey, John Lindsey, Ralph Yarborough.
1972 was the first time I ever voted --- 18 yrs old
thx for the memories -- especially about Shirley Chisholm. Fierce, brilliant woman.
There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka
Voting in '72; I just turned 21
And was a little upset that you kids didn't have to wait like we did.
Of course, that brings up Lyle Lovett, I forget the song's title:
When I was in high school
I was not popular
Now I am older
and man it don't matter
Now interviewing signature candidates. Apply within.
Ah, Richardson was there.
Explains a lot to me. He went on to carbetbag in NM and won a house seat for years, then, served in Clinton's cabinet, then became Governor and really fucked things up here, next endorsed Obama, much to the chagrin of her heinous, which put him in the Clinton revenge column until he endorsed her heinous this time around hoping to revive his corrupt career. These people all disgust me.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
That's a very interesting list.
Some infamous neocons like Wolfie, Pipes, Kristol. Some academics like Glazer and Huntington. Some pols like Richardson, Hollings and LBJ's son-in-law, Robb. And some with feet in two worlds like Moynihan.
It is a pretty disgusting group. For those thought not to be so bad, it's good to remember with whom they chose to associate.
A chilling tale from the past which explains how the
Democratic Party got where it is today. Those people are not friends of the little guy. Thank you for the history lesson, GS.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
The people in that list are responsible for a lot of deaths.
A number of them were also involved in forming the Committee on the Present Danger, a predecessor group to the people now pushing for war against Russia and censorship, even prosecution, of sites like Counterpunch, Naked Capitalism and Antiwar.com.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt ...
... apparently, it's also a tributary to the Potomac,
I came here this morning just to find an open thread and post a comment about that CNN story. The most fascinating thing about the confrontation is that the aides on both sides are so deeply unaware of just what it is that they themselves have just done. The Trump folks are just as bad as the Clinton crew -- they're absolutely oblivious to the fundamental qualities that defined both their campaign and their candidate.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Thanks, goin' South, an interesting bit of current history &
a look back to the older history that helped to bring it about. You should do a series, how the CDM created the DLC and helped to midwife the PNAC. Though never perfectly identical in all things this is the beginning of where the two parties started to become simply two sides of the same damn coin.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
We're living their nightmare, an apparition they mistook
for a dream.
Wherever that group went, they seemed to win over that part of the power elite. Patient Zero of the current, widespread illness.
Jeeze what a rogues
gallery then and now. The rogues gallery of characters from 1972 list makes you know that even then these assholes did not care about anything but bamboozling the people into voting for their mutual agenda. It really is a duopoly wherein 'public' campaigns have no relationship to their 'private' policy or agenda. I found that this time around the campaigning was absurd. They all just argued variations on a neoliberal/neocon theme. The general was a disgusting display of outright sleaze. Looks like a lot of people are hip to their jive. As Bernie said enough is enough. How absurd is it when after there wrestlin' match the manager's all get together to go over their game plays. Kinda of gives 'My esteemed colleague' a whole new meaning. Complicit rat bastards who add insult to injury.
What's an open thread without some music?
We live in interesting times. When things get too interesting, this is my playlist. Although dated, it has never gone out-of-date. It will not calm you down.
One for the anti-colonialist in me.
[VIDEO:https://youtu.be/ejorQVy3m8E]
One for the beaten-down factory worker that I was, and still largely am, even though now I shower before work not after.
[VIDEO:https://youtu.be/Ofrqm6-LCqs]
One for the student and farmer and shop worker and retiree and soldier and the generally fed-up everywhere.
[VIDEO:https://youtu.be/V6tN3hLXEP8]
We have both European and American (USA) versions of that one...
[VIDEO:https://youtu.be/AvgRrbLq5Zs]
And now we come to the point where the tin foil meets the road, so to speak, and I am urged, then pushed, then required
to drink and pace nervously while watching this repeatedly.
[VIDEO:https://youtu.be/pYupSHWEJxA]
I warned you. It will not calm you down.
Now interviewing signature candidates. Apply within.
Rebels have lost 50% of Aleppo
this will be over in a month or so
I get sick reading the NYT
Extremists Turn to a Leader to Protect Western Values: Vladimir Putin
Oh really? What better way to discredit Putin and Russia than making them the spiritual leader of all right-wing, neo-nazis and other racist nutcase populists in Europe and the US. If you can't accuse Putin anymore as an evil communist, let's try to make him a role model for nazis....Should work, shouldn't it?
I think the dirt is flooding over and the swamp is anything but drained out. Tell me I am dumb and don't understand the article, please. I feel some authors should wash their hands before they write. The dirt on their hands soils their articles.
Well, I don't understand the world anymore.
https://www.euronews.com/
You're absolutely not dumb, and you don't misunderstand.
The neoliberal elites are doing their best to make Russia a bogeyman to distract from the mounting horrors at home. And you're right: they're just throwing shit up against a wall to see if anything will stick. "Putin's a commie" is intended to confuse and mislead Americans too uninformed to understand the Soviet Union is long gone. "Putin's a nazi" is delivered to the kind of silly hangers-on at TOP who love HRC and pledge undying fealty to the Democratic Party. I'm sure there are government-approved fake news outlets pushing the "Putin's an alien" and "Putin's the antichrist" depending on the audience.
We have civil discourse here at the level of reality TV.
And maybe they've finally
And maybe they've finally realized that fusses over the long-defunct Soviet Union leave a lot of people laughing at their blank-shot scare tactics, although terms like 'liberal, commie, socialist' have been programmed into a number of Republicans via Faux and Fiends propaganda nooses over the years as a Very Bad Thing which fails to enrich corporate interests and investing billionaires at public/proletariat expense and might knee-jerk a little programming in Grandma, not to mention some internet trolls. (Naturally, though, nobody likes Neo-Nazis, apart from a number of internet trolls.)
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.