As Obama is officially turning into a lame duck President, those who live and die by the election cycle are looking towards the next great battle on the horizon. Conservative groups are already busy shaping and putting together their intelligent, thoughtful arguments for why Hillary shouldn’t be Presi….oh, wait.
Here’s Tom Miller from the anti-Hillary America Rising PAC to explain the strategy to us:
“Everyone feels like they know her, so we have to give them information they hadn’t heard about to break through….For younger voters, some of that ‘new information’ could be ’90s scandals and other aspects of their record they didn’t know about, making that material relevant, if not central, to the case against her.”
Ahhhhh…those 90s scandals. And since the millennials and the younger generation have become such a crucial part of the Democratic electorate, I’m guessing we can expect to be hearing a lot about them in the months to come. To which I say, yay! Because who isn’t feeling nostalgic for those awkward early-Internet days when Clinton conspiracy theories were getting bandied about on discussion groups like alt.fan.rush-limbaugh? And there’s so much stuff from that time that never got adequately explained. Like the angle at which Vince Foster’s gun was positioned in relation to his head. Those Whitewater files. How many people the Clintons *really* killed in Arkansas. The question of whether oral sex qualifies as sex. I’m sure a political operative somewhere has Monica’s blue dress stashed away, and is ready to drag it out at the right moment…and hey, what is Gennifer Flowers doing these days?
Add to this the chorus line of Ted Cruz, Darrell Issa and Trey Gowdy dancing to the tune of “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi” and you’ve got a presidential election I’m looking forward to. Incidentally, the bottle of booze in my kitchen has cracked itself open and is insisting that I have a drink. I have no idea why that happened.
This almost makes the upcoming veto war between Obama and the Republicans seem sane. 2016 can’t come slowly enough.
11/19/2014 at 12:53 pm
As a typically Canadian passive-aggressive response to the Election Industry, I absolutely refuse to discuss 2016 until 2016. I’ve refused to talk about it since the 2016 hyperbole started the night of the 2012 election. (Actually, there was a lot of 2016 talk during & even before the 2012 election. But somehow, despite the incessant planning & plotting, we are to believe that only crazy people believe in conspiracies.)
Anyway, back to my snarky point….Obama actually became a lame duck in 2010, right when he started retreating on the health care front and began helping his fellow Pussycrats to retreat their way out of power in Congress.
From that moment on, minus some bold reinforcement of Bush policies (endless war, drones, spying, Gitmo etc) there’s been virtually nothing but pained quacking coming out of the White House.
11/19/2014 at 6:35 pm
Bwah! The “pained quacking” cracked me up. Some of us were more hopeful…ahem, naive?…than you.
I know of quite a few people who are sticking to their principles and following the no talking about 2016 rule…but a lot of political operatives are already thinking about it….
11/20/2014 at 9:52 am
In general, operatives and political speculation needs to be ignored for democracy to be able to function at all. In fact, one could use it as a barometer of the health of a democracy.
Political operatives ONLY think about positioning for the next election cycle. They don’t give a fuck about issues, except in the way that it helps/hurts their candidate. It could be climate change, health care, food stamps, a new postal stamp, or Justin Bieber’s latest criminal charges. It’s all the same to them. All that matters is having the winning position. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about winning power to DO something with it, it’s just about winning power.(See: Clinton “I can get more done now than when I was President”) Sure, some of them actually do care about shit and would like things to be better. But not enough to actually do something about it. That might hurt their chances in the next election, or their chance at getting a lucrative corporate lobbyist gig down the road.
Which reminds me…Even though Obama promoted himself as an ultra-liberal who was going to change everything with hope and puppies and apple piezzzzzzzzz -Sorry, uh, where was I? Oh, yeah. I didn’t expect much of anything good to happen under Obama because I know how Congress “works”. But even IF he magically got Congress to do his bidding more often then not, I still expected him to act more like former Senator Droopy Dog (aka Joe Lieberman) once in power. Cynical pessimist? Who me? Just because I expect Obama will spend more time in the next 2 years thinking about who he’ll pardon and trying to line up positions in corporate boardrooms? (Guess: Gold Mansacks, GE & Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman)
Despite this, Obama STILL failed to clear my ultra-low expectation bar. Mostly because, especially after 2010, the dude wasn’t even trying to get anything done. It was all just damage control and positioning for 2012. There was just no fight in this guy! He’d have done far better (especially with the mindless macho-man worshipping American public) if he wasn’t so eager to roll over and become the Republican’s prison bitch. Fighting & losing is still better than bending over voluntarily.
It’s no wonder none of the Democrats want to be seen with him.
11/20/2014 at 7:05 pm
True. It’s like he just gave up. I get the feeling that he’s waiting for this whole presidency thing to be over with.
And political operatives have quite a loud voice in our society…what does that say about our democracy, eh?