Cross posted from : Rubble
Occupy Portland - N17: Occupy the Banks! Portland, Oregon. 11:05 AM
May Day – What’s Happening? | Occupy Portland:
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20 excuses to get out of work!
Not all of these events have the consented support of the Occupy Portland General Assembly
I was surprised to see a couple signs posted out in my neck of the woods earlier this week…
This pretty much sums it up for me.
As for this last image, on Facebook I wrote:
There is truth here. Not that these men are necessarily misogynists, they probably are not. But their campaign strategies are geared towards solidifying support of demographic groups who will actually vote for them, and in the general election the majority of women will vote Dem pretty much no matter what these fools do, so pissing them off really doesn't change the game for them at all.
Appealing to Non-College Educated White Males, however, the GOP's most dominant demographic, is a huge part of their game plan. The more heavily they dominate this segment of society, the more they can alienate these fellows from the democrats and Obama, the greater their chances of victory in the primaries and in November.
Being worried about what women think is a losing game for them, there is no reason for them to care what they think at all.
Since then, Romney has wrapped up the nomination. This came a little earlier than I thought it would. I actually suspected that Santorum would not give up until the convention, allowing the GOP as much of a chance as possible to try to get out of nominating Romney.
However, I think Santorum had a real moment of clarity leading to his withdrawal from the race. Brace yourselves, I am actually going to say something nice about this fellow.
I do suspect that staying in the race as long as humanly possible was Santorum's plan. I think, on the Friday before he dropped out, that he had every intention of still being in the race a week later.
I believe there were two factors that made him change his mind.
One, of course, was the fact that he was apparently looking at an embarrassing loss in his home state of Pennsylvania.
At this point in his campaign, politically, I think he should have been looking more towards the future than any real chance of being sworn in as president in 2013. Of course, he still had a long shot at widening the cracks between Romney and the, quite frankly, bigoted far right wing of the Republican Party to create some convention drama and an even longer shot at still derailing Romney’s nomination, either becoming the nominee himself or creating the possibility of another candidate stepping into the role.
But the odds of creating any of these scenarios were shrinking fast. Getting shellacked in Pennsylvania would have lowered the odds even further.
And I don’t think his eye should even have been on the nomination this year, at least for the last couple months. He should have been looking at 2016 or 2020, depending on Romney’s fate this fall. For Santorum, staying in the race as long as possible should have been all about positioning himself for the future. The longer he hung in there, collecting headlines if not delegates, he was building a solid foundation for a future run at the Presidency.
The GOP has a track record of elevating those who make a good showing one year to frontrunner status the next. Santorum’s campaign, for the last month or two, could have been following a John McCain strategy.
In 2000, McCain stayed in the race far past the point where Bush had locked up the nomination and was rewarded with front runner status for almost the entire duration of the 2008 Republican primaries, fairly easily wrapping up the nomination his next time out. Of course, he managed to stay in the race that year without becoming a joke.
In 2008, the McCain role was played not by Romney, but by Huckabee. However, since Huckabee decided, early, to sit this one out, Romney slid into the 2nd place role this year and, like McCain in 2008, has now completed a fairly easy primary season and secured the nomination without too much fuss or muss.
Let’s face it, the GOP primaries this year were not a close thing. Romney owned them. Most of the noise about any real competition this year was just that, noise from the media trying to keep a blowout interesting through the end of the fourth quarter. This is not to say that what competition there was wasn’t interesting, it was, and it revealed a lot about the nature of the GOP and its different demographic elements, but the race itself was not a close one at all.
If Santorum really wants to be president, he has a real chance at becoming the GOP front runner the next time around. Like McCain and Romney, he needs to spend the next four to eight years quietly organizing and he can, pretty much, claim early frontrunner status the next time around. Especially if the far right continues to dominate the party like it has, which is almost inevitable if Obama wins re-election.
However, this future front runner status depends on Santorum maintaining his credibility this year.
By pulling out when he did, the former Senator is ending on a relative high note, while he is still seen as a strong candidate. The story, however, could have changed if he stayed in the race and suffered an embarrassing loss in his home state.
So far, the humiliating 17 point loss of his Senate seat has remained out of the national press, for the most part, and has been forgotten by almost everyone.
After another brutal home state loss, I suspect that his past political failures would enter into the national conversation and the story would change from his relatively successful presidential campaign this year to his repeated failings as a candidate for political office.
In other words, the press about his campaign would turn from being mostly positive to mostly negative. By getting out now, as I said, he ends this year’s run on a high note and 2012 becomes a bright spot on his resume, not a hurdle to be overcome in the future.
All of these considerations set aside, I still suspect that Santorum was in the race for the long run this year, until the weekend before he dropped out.
He was still seen as being a factor in this year’s nomination process, his campaign was still receiving decent press, though it was starting to turn a little negative as Pennsylvania approached, and, let’s face it, a part of me really wonders if Candidate Santorum is really savvy enough to consider the arguments I made above in defense of his campaign to this point and how it poses him for a future run for the nomination.
If there was ever a candidate to stay in the race far past the point of respectability, ruining his reputation and future in a blind run towards an unreachable finish line, it would seem to be the former Senator. This would be a move right out of his playbook, blind self-immolation.
Though I am sure his campaign advisors saw what I saw for the last couple of months and have been talking to the former Senator quite a bit about how long to stay in and when to drop out. In fact, I would strongly suspect that these voices in his ears were whispering that, in order to position himself properly for the next campaign, that he should drop out before the Pennsylvania contest.
And I am pretty sure that Santorum was ignoring these voices until his daughter was hospitalized the weekend before he dropped out.
That weekend, I bet, Rick got in touch not only with some big doses of reality but that he also took a long look at his priorities in life.
Whether or not he really believed that he still had a shot at the Presidency this year, I do not know, but even a rock would be having doubts by that point. But I think he was still having fun. I think, whether or not he believed he still had a chance, that he was enjoying the spotlight that was shining not only on himself but also on his (crazy, crazy, terrible, awful, horrible) political beliefs.
And, of course, inspiring national conversations about beliefs that are important to oneself would be a difficult role for anyone to walk away from. I suspect that as long as he was inspiring these conversations that Santorum wasn’t going anywhere, even if staying in the race eventually cost him his own political future.
Until his daughter’s hospitalization, I don’t think Santorum would have dropped out of the race until his campaign faded from the spotlight, until it resembled something like Newt Gingrich’s, and then I think he’d probably stay in the race until the money completely ran out or even longer, until, like Newt, he could sit there with his toe still in the pond while doing very little active campaigning.
But that takes a lot of time and effort and I am sure that even Santorum was beginning to see that his 2012 run was over. It is one thing to be taking time away from one’s family and an ill child when one has a real shot at the White House, it is quite another to take that time for what amounts to little more than political noisemaking and rabblerousing.
I think Santorum made a very healthy choice here for himself and his family. I applaud him for it. Sure, I wanted the man out of the race. Amusing (and infuriating) as he was, any chance he has at ever reaching the Oval Office needs to be shut down as soon as possible. But I also am glad to see him (or anyone) putting his family first like this.
Yet my applause are a little bitter sweet here. By making a great choice as a human and a father he has also, accidently, made a great political move. I would be very surprised if we are not dealing with frontrunner Santorum the next time out, and that is not a good thing for America at all.
I see his exit as coming about through the following process…
My advisors keep telling me that it is getting close to the time where I should walk away, but I am not there yet myself. Wait, I need to be with my family now. Oh, okay guys, let’s schedule a press event. Why are my advisors so happy? I though we were admitting defeat and going home? Why are they so happy about losing? Why are they chanting “2016… 2016… 2016…”? Boy, that volunteer has a cute butt, I wonder if he works out? Holy cow, I’ve got to go pray now!
Okay. I tried to keep those sorts of jabs out of this post. But I couldn’t resist just one.
See you the next time around, Rick. Though I can’t say that I look forward to it.
Yeah, it’s been way too long since I posted here. I’ve been throwing a lot of links up on Facebook, Snip.it, and Pinterest, but I have not had any time at all to write for the last several weeks.
Follow me on those sites for more content between my posts, and from the links I share, you can get a pretty good idea of what is distressing our democracy on an almost daily basis.
Amen.
I really needed to see this today. This is why we all keep on keeping on.
Observers Detail Flaws in Russian Election - NYTimes.com:
Mr. Putin, who has already served eight years as president and four years as prime minister, won a new six-year term on Sunday with an official tally of 63.75 percent of the vote. He has already suggested that he might run again in 2018, potentially extending his tenure as Russia’s pre-eminent leader to 24 years, on a par with Brezhnev and Stalin.
Before we get all shocked about Putin and say, "It could never happen here!" think about this:
A likely list of US Presidents in a future text book...
1989 - 2021 or 2025 (32-34 years):
-Bush
-Clinton
-Bush
-Obama (almost Clinton & prominently featuring Clinton family members and former Clinton officials in the cabinet/administration)
-(Clinton or Bush likely)
Hillary and Jeb have to be considered the initial front runners in 2016.
I am starting to think of our current period as the Dynastic Period in American history.
Of course, there have been a few more shenanigans in the Russian elections than the American elections. 2000 not withstanding, though, Americans are clearly choosing their leaders from these prominent families.
Recently, I read an article saying that Jeb may even jump in this year to save the GOP from their circular firing squad. And I think there is little doubt that Hillary will take a shot at 2016. It wouldn’t even be the most shocking event ever if she ends up being on the 2012 ticket as VP.
In 2008, one of the main reasons why I supported Obama in the primaries was that I felt having a 20 year stretch with only the last names Bush or Clinton residing in the White House was bad for America and bad for our democracy, even if we liked the people in office (or some of them).
Continuing this trend for another four to eight years? Having the potential for the Presidency to be passed back and forth between two families, if Hillary was elected twice, for nearly thirty years?
That is dangerous, I believe, for any democracy.
I suspect, though, that we may not be done with Presidents named Bush and Clinton.
I would be very surprised not to see either Hillary or Jeb picking up a nomination in the future, and 2016 may even end up being Bush v. Clinton in the general.
And they are young enough that both may eventually end up in the White House.
Picture this:
Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Bush, Clinton
If everyone gets two terms, that would be 44 years of dynastic presidencies with one, minor exception. Almost half a century.
Age may limit these far reaching possibilities.
Hillary will be 81 in 2028 and 86 in 2033 (end of the latest possible second term in this scenario).
Jeb will be 76 in 2028 and 80 in 2033.
In comparison, Ronald Reagan, our oldest president so far, was almost 70 when he was first inaugurated in 1981 and served until two weeks before his 78th birthday. He lived to age 93, but was crippled by Alzheimer's for, at least, the last 10 years of his life.
This article drifts a little towards the unsteady conspiracy theories from time to time, but it also makes plenty of solid points.
The Jeb Scenario: Can You Say “President Bush” Again? | Snip.it:
The Bushes are nothing if not resilient. George W. Bush, he of so few qualifications but with his own distinctive Bush personality and formidable charisma, came out of the dust of his father’s re-election defeat in 1992, stronger than his father ever was politically. And though W. is now persona non grata to many, his brother would come back as a significantly different brand. He’s widely regarded as more capable, much more focused, much better at delivering points. He’s able to pull off a kind of sober, reasonable persona, more stable than a Santorum or a Gingrich or most of the other contenders. Rich but not entitled. A kind of Romney—without the Romney.
And yet….And yet he is still a Bush. That means a great deal, because, putting aside all the stylistic differences, this is a clan with a mission. It’s a mission they’ll never talk about, beyond vague statements about a sense within the family of Duty to Nation. No, the Bush clan is the ultimate representative of the game plan of the one percent of the one percent. What they stand for in private is much, much more troubling than most Americans know. What I learned in the five years I spent investigating them—as they were going out of power the last time—shook me to my core.
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Mostly around here, I do things quickly with little thought, especially when it comes to assigning tags to posts (itself a relatively recent addition to the blog). However, one issue I spent quite a bit of time thinking about was on how to tag LGBT issues.
I decided to just file them under “Civil Rights.”
The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capeheart pretty much sums up my thoughts in this clip.
On a side note, Gov. Christie comes across as a real ass in the brief clip of his appearance on Morning Joe. I thought his charm was supposed to be his selling point.
Oops, I forgot. This is what they call charm in many corners of the far right these days.
Dicks.
Blacks and gays: The shared struggle for civil rights - PostPartisan - The Washington Post:
“It’s an issue of civil rights, as you said. It’s an issue of equality. It’s an issue of equal treatment under the law,” I said. “No one is asking for special rights. No one is asking for any kind of special favors. We’re just looking for the same rights and responsibilities that come with marriage and also the protections that are provided under marriage. In that regard overall we’re talking about a civil rights issue and what African Americans continue to struggle with is exactly what lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are struggling with today.”
Men and women picket the White House on May 29, 1965, in a protest organized by the Mattachine Society of Washington ( File photo - United Press International )
