July 18, 2015

"Hillary is outdone in first major Iowa test as Bernie Sanders calls for a 'revolution' and Martin O'Malley has some Clinton partisans on their feet – and she talks mostly about HERSELF."

The headline at The Daily Mail, covering an event that I watched live on C-SPAN last night. Meade and I were not in the same location, and he texted me that Hillary was on C-SPAN. Here's the (slightly expurgated) texting that followed:
meade: Hillary live on cspan/Now Martin Omalley

althouse: Missed h/O sounds like he's seeing the speech for the first time

meade: Same thought/The energy is waiting for Bernie/O's S's whistle/O has an impressive forehead

althouse: The i voted for you refrain worked on me
O'Malley ends his speech with a repeated line, "I voted for you," which you're asked to picture yourself saying that to your grandchildren someone who asks you who you voted for in 2016. Intellectually, I find it corny, but physically, I repeatedly got chills, even after my mind told my body to cut that out. Next up is Bernie Sanders:
meade: Bernmentum/Revolution!/I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore

althouse: Angry old man

meade: White man

althouse: Not working on me/Too yell-y

meade: Plus he obviously wants to tax you more/Enough taxes will never be enough/We are coming for your wealth/You greedy person you

althouse: Going back to the Hillary part on line/Very wooden

meade: Don't stop thinking about/Socialism/Jim Webb -- token military/We need to be more like Germany

althouse: H attacks walker

meade: Jim Webb is obviously running for vice president/Webb is putting Iowa communistdemocrats to sleep

althouse: Hilary's delivery is so harsh. Not persuasive/Watching Webb now

meade: She had to compete with harsh angry old Bernie who was persuasive/Webb seems anti Obama

althouse: Wow. No applause at all/He pauses to dead silence

meade... He's bombing/Bombing Iowa

althouse: He's not really a democrat

meade: FDR gets his biggest applause
Webb ended his speech by observing that he'd finished without consuming all his time. I guess the speechwriters allowed time for the applause lines. Awkward! Then there's meeting and greeting in the crowd. (It was the Iowa Democratic Party's annual Hall of Fame dinner (whatever that is).) All the candidates were out there on the floor mingling... except Hillary:
meade: Where the hell is hill?

althouse: She stalked off as quickly as she could. Right after speech. It was weird. Her heart isn't in it. She wants to be unopposed

meade: She came back/Huma made her/But her feelings are hurt/Again/I'm starting to get depressed for Dems/Oh!/Lincoln Chafee!
ADDED: Here's C-SPAN's video of the whole 3-hour event. Scroll to the middle to get to the part with the candidates, beginning with Lincoln Chafee whom both Meade and I missed. Scroll to 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to the milling around part. Bernie dominates. People crowd around him and want to meet him. The camera backs up and we see the surly Webb, getting interviewed by one reporter. The awkwardness of it is painful to watch. The camera pans around and eventually we find O'Malley and Chaffee. Lots of attention to O'Malley. I'm watching half an hour of this, seeing everyone but Hillary. But where is Hillary? Meade wrote, "She came back/Huma made her," but I never see her. What I saw — what I was referring to when I said "She stalked off as quickly as she could" — was the end of her speech, 1 hour and 50 minutes into the recording.

91 comments:

SteveR said...

Let's not get depressed for them.

ddh said...

How did these three do on the robotic self-awareness test?

Meade said...

I know. I'm too empathetic. It's a flaw in my character.

ddh said...

It sounds as if one did not achieve robotic self-awareness.

SteveR said...

It's a flaw in my character.

I'm sure it was a micro-aggression to have brought it up. Sorry!

YoungHegelian said...

Didja ever notice how folks who will endlessly tell you about how far right the Republican Party has drifted don't mention that an out & out socialist (who isn't even a registered Democrat) is now the darling of a sizable chunk of the Democratic Party?

YoungHegelian said...

It's also time for some revisionist history on the 2008 Democratic Primaries. The Party Line is that HRC's campaign was just overtaken by the enthusiasm ginned up by the first black candidate to have a real chance at winning the presidency & by the incredible skills of the Obama campaign.

Maybe, closer to the truth, is that HRC was an awful campaigner then like she is now, but she had better screeners in the media to keep that meme from getting traction. Combine too many party operatives seeing their livelihoods on the line with her snootiness toward the Party rank & file, & the truth inexorably comes out: Hillary sucks at campaigning!

J. Farmer said...

Bernie might have to be moved to the top spot of my preferred '16 candidates. I had looked forward to supporting Rand Paul as a lone voice of sensible, restrained foreign policy, but he has been sounding more and more like a conventional Republican hawk as the days go by. And his criticism of the Iran deal was absurd even by that standard. Clinton is already a hawk with an atrocious record of foreign policy decision-making. Sanders would likely find most of his domestic agenda severely constrained by Congress, but in foreign policy, he could be effective at rolling back some of America's more absurd hegemonic pretensions.

iowan2 said...

I have yet to see why Clinton's wife is even a consideration.

Charlie said...

Bernie is like the cranky old manager at your local DMV. The bureaucracy, apparently, will solve all our problems.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I have yet to see why Clinton's wife is even a consideration.

I don't think Huma is running.

rhhardin said...

Intellectually, I find it corny, but physically, I repeatedly got chills, even after my mind told my body to cut that out.

Women are helpless. Modern feminism says this is good rather than a reason to eliminate women's vote.

As Vickie Hearne points out, men abstract away irrelevant details and focus until something is resolved; women include all the complexity they can.

Both find their respective directions enjoyable and interesting.

It just makes for a really lousy electorate, if survival is a consideration.

hawkeyedjb said...

What do you suppose these Democrats are thinking when they stand up and cheer for socialism? Maybe 100 million dead bodies last century just weren't enough. Perhaps the thought of adding to the body count is just so exciting. Ooh! Ooh! We'll start with the Republicans!

Socialism: the killing machine that keeps on killing.

Bobber Fleck said...

hawkeyedjb said:

What do you suppose these Democrats are thinking when they stand up and cheer for socialism? Maybe 100 million dead bodies last century just weren't enough. Perhaps the thought of adding to the body count is just so exciting. Ooh! Ooh! We'll start with the Republicans!

Socialism: the killing machine that keeps on killing.


Being a Democrat requires a convenient memory.

Albert Einstein: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

rhhardin said...

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different resluts.

Fernandinande said...

hawkeyedjb said...
Socialism: the killing machine that keeps on killing.


- But we're good people and not at all like *those* socialists!

- What about Sweden, Norway, etc? Since socialism is contrary to human nature it's an unstable system, so let's check back in two or three - or perhaps 10? - generations.

Big Mike said...

I keep wondering when Webb will wake up to the fact that he's not a 21st century Democrat. The Democrats are trying to fly with only one wing, and an extreme one at that.

SteveR said...

What about Sweden, Norway, etc? Since socialism is contrary to human nature it's an unstable system, so let's check back in two or three - or perhaps 10? - generations.

The first several generations of Scandinavian socialism was subsidize by the Defense budget of the USA. Now they will start getting into the sow/reap mode with an immigration exclamation point. Good times!

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Big Mike said...

... and she talks mostly about HERSELF

Is there anything else she knows?

Unknown said...

===What about Sweden, Norway, etc?

Hmm, the last men standing of European socialism. How much of Norway’s coping is due to North Sea Oil? I also weep for their prostration before foreign religious immigration.

Lets talk about Socialist countries in the news....What about Greece??

begging for loans so they can pay their loan payments

... Portugal...

Spain....

Venezuela

The Venezuelan government has taken over a toilet paper factory to avoid any scarcity of the product.
The National Guard has taken control of the plant, and officers will monitor production and distribution.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-24185342


???

khesanh0802 said...

Bernie's run is making it crystal clear where most of the msm reside on the left/right scale.

The Bergall said...

Pass the popcorn..........

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure Hillary won't make the same mistakes this time that she made the last time. Bernie will flame out, eventually. He energizes a lot of the Democrat base, but that's about it. People like J Farmer are still going to find a justification for voting for Hillary when the time comes. Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, all these guys are demons compared to Hillary.

The question will become, whoever is the Republican nominee, will they be able to overcome the media demonization in order to defeat Hillary?

That's going to be the test.

furious_a said...

althouse: Angry old man

#FeeltheBern !

Sebastian said...

Socialist calls for revolution.

AA complaint: "Not working on me/Too yell-y"

If only Lenin, Mao, Fidel, and Hugo had toned it down a little, they might have been palatable.

But no, they had to go all out with their shrill speeches and tin ears.

Birkel said...

Without the demographic turnout of the past two presidential elections, I wonder if Democrats can win in 2016. I doubt it. And I hope not.

richard mcenroe said...

O'Malley keeps leaving that sentence unfinished. I'm sure what he meant to say was, "I voted for you to pay more taxes to me!"

Hagar said...

The Norwegian Labor Party has formally declared it no longer is a socialist party, but has "evolved" to become a social-democrat party.

I do not know about Denmark and Sweden, but if you look, I think you will find something of the same there.

Hagar said...

Norways prime minister is a Conservative, Sweden's a Social-Democrat, Denmark's a Liberal (center-right in Denmark).

Bay Area Guy said...

If Bernie can slow down the Hillary juggernaut, that'd be a good thing. O'Malley and Webb are so politically ineffectual, it's embarrassing.

Hillary's heart may not be in it, but she's still formidable.

Fen said...

but has "evolved" to become a social-democrat party.

"Its not shit. Its a pizza with shit as the topping"

J. Farmer said...

@eric:

"People like J Farmer are still going to find a justification for voting for Hillary when the time comes. "

Nope. Not so long as she supports the same kind of foreign policy as dipshits like you. But then again, when has not knowing what the fuck you're talking about ever stopped people like you from saying it anyway?

richard mcenroe said...

Sweden's Socialist system is decaying rapidly. For example, their public health system has gone from 120,000 available hospital beds to just 20,000.

The Godfather said...

I am not, and never have been, a Democrat -- I haven't even played one on television. But I've had a lot of friends and family members who are Democrats. I really, really, really wonder what these decent reasonable people are thinking right now.

I'm too polite to ask.

Oh, sure, they wonder the same thing about the Republicans like Donald Trump, and uh and uh -- Oh jeez. Who else? Sure they dislike Cruz and Perry and Jindal (they don't DARE put Carson in that category publicly), but with all that "clown car" stuff, the fact is that there are a bunch of serious people with serious ideas and serious records running for the Republican nomination. Not one of them is (really) a fascist. Not one of them turned Libya into a failed state. Not one of them turned Baltimore into a failed city.

But the Democrats HAVE to nominate Hillary! because at least she would be the first major party candidate with ladyparts. God only knows, maybe that would be enough.

Which could give Bruce Jenner something to think about.

I mean Caitlyn.

Michael said...

"What about Sweden, Norway, etc? Since socialism is contrary to human nature it's an unstable system, so let's check back in two or three - or perhaps 10? - generations."

What the Scandi's have is not socialism, it's market capitalism combined with a really extensive welfare state. The productive economy pretty much does its thing, and the fruits are widely shared out. This works in a small, highly homogenous society. Whether it would work in a diverse nation of 300,000,000 people is questionable.

Anonymous said...

When will the Press talk about HRC looks and clothes? I find her incredibly hard to look at or hear her. She is a drama queen who feels that we (i.e., voters) owe her the WH POTUS. Press treats her so much better than they treated Palin or Bachmann.

Birkel said...

Is J Farmer a new troll or a reincarnated troll?

J. Farmer said...

@Birkel:

I responded to someone who mentioned me by name and made an assertion on the basis of zero knowledge. What's the problem?

Anonymous said...

Seriously J. Farmer, if it comes down between Hillary and Trump or any Republican, you're going to vote for Hillary.

Why deny it?

J. Farmer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
J. Farmer said...

@Eric:

I base my decision for the presidency almost exclusively on foreign policy, where the president has the widest latitude to act without constraint. If it's between two hawks, I will either vote third party or not vote at all. It really is that simple. I don't care about political parties and don't vote based on "D" or "R" next to somebody's name. I find the 4-year ritual in pretending like we are faced with some momentous decision between two vastly different candidates absurd. I've already said in the comments to this blog that I like Trump on immigration and if he went heterodox on foreign policy, I could potentially consider voting for him. But Trump's macho talk on foreign policy is laughable, and the guy, for the most part, is a moron.

Big Mike said...

@J Farmer, on the basis of zero knowledge, you wouldn't have the guts to call eric a "dipshit" to his face even if you had a gun in your hand.

J. Farmer said...

@Big Mike:

So what?

Bad Lieutenant said...

J Farmer,

Do you now, or have you ever had, another identity under which you've posted on this blog?

...nope, no decency at all... ;-)

J, the reason you are in the barrel here is your paleo/neoisolationism. It gives the game away.

J. Farmer said...

@Unknown:

"Do you now, or have you ever had, another identity under which you've posted on this blog?"

Never. I comment on all blogs using some formulation of "J. Farmer", "jfarmer017," "jfarmer027," etc. It is a combination of the initial of my first name and my last name. I was born and raised in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, and I am listed. Anyone that wishes to discover me does not have much work ahead of them.

"J, the reason you are in the barrel here is your paleo/neoisolationism. "

I do not mind being "in the barrel." I like a good argument, and I am willing to back up my positions. Calling me a "leftist" or some variation thereof (even if it were completely accurate) is completely irrelevant to whether or not the argument I make is valid or not. That is Logic 101, but it does not stop the likes of someone like "Michael K" responding to me half a dozen times to tell me that I am too stupid to respond to. I am in agreement with a lot of the commenters here in regards to being an immigration restrictionist, and I doubt many people would find it much of an argument to call me a "xenophobe" or "racist."

I certainly have affection for paleoconservatives and find them much preferable to the neocon wing of the spectrum. I am not an isolationist, neo or otherwise, but that is the most predictable and boring of all the responses to an anti-interventionist point of view.

richard mcenroe said...

Michael, it still isn't working. The productive part of the economy is shrinking, the demanding part of the economy is growing, and their cozy little boutique mono-ethnicity culture is being swamped by a wave of EU-mandated immigration.

Bad Lieutenant said...

I was kidding about the alias. Anyway, so what's the difference between you and an isolationist?

J. Farmer said...

@Unknown:

"Anyway, so what's the difference between you and an isolationist?"

I am generally opposed to protectionist measure in trade and would prefer to see freer trade (not the corporatist "managed trade" deals we often get). I don't have much of a problem with NATO in its original incarnation though would like to have seen it dismantled after the cold war. I don't believe that the US will go to war with a thermonuclear armed state over Estonia and Latvia, which pretty much makes their NATO membership not worth the paper it's written on. I am not much exercised about our alliance with Japan, though I don't think we need to be providing border security for South Korea. I think that the post-9/11 foreign policy Bush and Obama have followed has been idiotic, counterproductive, harmful to US interests, and destabilizing on a global scale. I think that America should avoid stupid, reckless military adventurism (e.g. nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq, regime change in Libya, etc.).

Birkel said...

So, ill-educated reactionary with a bit of anti-U.S. bias....
Got it.

J. Farmer said...

@Birkel:

"So, ill-educated reactionary with a bit of anti-U.S. bias....
Got it."

If you consider yourself sympathetic to conservatism, then why precisely is a "reactionary" a bad thing?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Farmer,
Sounds reasonable. Obama wouldn't go to war over the Baltic states but I'm not so sure about other actors. Posession of nuclear weapons is not the deterrent it once was. There's just too many nuclear-armed states that could potentially weigh in if a conflict escalates to that level.
I don't think Putin is a reckless idiot but, in Obama, he knows his man.

Michael K said...

"And his criticism of the Iran deal was absurd even by that standard."

Hilarious comment by the brilliant farmer.

Obama loves you. Not many left.

J. Farmer said...

@Cracker Emcee:

"Obama wouldn't go to war over the Baltic states but I'm not so sure about other actors."

In your estimation, what "other actors" will go to war with Russia over three countries with about six million people in them? Crimea has nearly 2 million inhabitants, and there are more than 40 million in all of Ukraine.


J. Farmer said...

@Michael K:

"Obama loves you. Not many left."

If this is the only criticism you can muster, it only shows how pathetic and obtuse you are.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

I'm saying that conflict is unpredictable and it would be a fool who thinks the aging missiles that he can't really use trump the modern conventional armies that potentially oppose him. I don't think Putin is that fool but he knows a weakling when he sees one.

J. Farmer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

I once feebly joked on here that I didn't care about the Crimea because years of playing Risk led me to assume that it belonged to Russia anyway. I don't think Europe feels the same way about the Baltic states. I'm not saying they would go to war over them but annexing them would be a profoundly different thing than rolling back into the Crimea.

J. Farmer said...

@Cracker Emcee:

"I don't think Putin is that fool but he knows a weakling when he sees one."

Why do you think George W. Bush decided against a war with Russia over the latter's invasion of Georgia?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

It's also not inconceivable that Brussels might think that a little muscle-flexing at an overreaching Russia would be just the thing to turn the European Union into, well, a union.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Georgia? See my remark about the Crimea. Doubt the same dynamic applies to Finland or Poland.

J. Farmer said...

@Cracker Emcee:

"Doubt the same dynamic applies to Finland or Poland."

Or the Ukraine.

Birkel said...

J Farmer is a ball of string. Who gets cat duty tonight?

J. Farmer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
J. Farmer said...

@Birkel:

If you think going to war with Russia over Estonia or Latvia would be a good thing, by all means make that case. If you don't, then you're in agreement with me. If you want to discuss it, I am more than happy to. If all you want to do is call me names, I am afraid I haven't found that very interesting since leaving the 3rd grade.


p.s. I am still waiting for you to tell me why a "reactionary" is a bad thing...

buwaya said...

I believe a modern US president has far more latitude with respect to economic policy than foreign policy. Foreign policy is constrained by circumstance outside of a single polities' control. For the most part it consists of responding to events and managing crises. Which may or may not come up. Clinton had very little to do with foreign policy, because he had no crises.
The economy, however, is very sensitive to the regulatory agencies, a bureaucratic army that answers only to the executive and which has tremendous leeway in interpreting their sphere of control and implementing their powers. They can destroy industries at will. The legislatures and the judiciary have very limited influence. No new laws are needed, and the courts, as we have seen, are impotent to limit them.

Eric said...

I remember somebody said that Hillary's campaign slogan is: "Let's get this over with."

J. Farmer said...

@buwaya:

"Clinton had very little to do with foreign policy, because he had no crises. "

Bill Clinton dropped bombs on Bosnia, Serbia, Sudan, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Anonymous said...

Is anyone taking bets on whether Althouse's use of "yell-y" is a hapax legomenon on Google?

She seems to using this form for a lot of nonce constructions recently. Must be the weather in Wisconsin. Or just laziness.

kcom said...

"Didja ever notice how folks who will endlessly tell you about how far right the Republican Party has drifted don't mention that an out & out socialist (who isn't even a registered Democrat) is now the darling of a sizable chunk of the Democratic Party?"

Because left is right and right is wrong. So the more you're left, the more you're right, and the more you're right, the more you're wrong.

See?

kcom said...

Clinton also dropped a bomb on Elian Gonzalez.

Sammy Finkelman said...

@ J Farmer.

Eric failed to pay attention to (maybe it was over his head) tgaht J Farmer had said he would consider votiong for Rand Paul except thatbhis foriegn policy was getting more hawkish. That does not sound like a dyed-in-the-fool Democrat, nor someone who likes the typical Democratic domestic egenda.

J Farmer said specifically:

Sanders would likely find most of his domestic agenda severely constrained by Congress

So why would he be someone who would "find some justification" for voting for Hlllary??

Eric was lumping him in with all the other - or what he thinks is all the other - Bernard Sanders voters. Farmer didn't even dsay he was a Democrat.

Gahrie said...

If you think going to war with Russia over Estonia or Latvia would be a good thing, by all means make that case.

Going to war is never a good thing. However, allowing Russia to reconquer Eastern Europe is even worse.

Is Poland worth defending? Germany? France? England?

Where do you draw the line?

Gahrie said...

Is Alaska worth going to war over? I mean not many people live there, and Russia has nuclear weapons, and it used to belong to Russia until our wily capitalists stole it from her.

kcom said...

There was no crisis in Rwanda either that killed 800,000 people.

And the Srebrenica anniversary just passed. You know, the one where Bill Clinton (in league with the U.N.) told all those civilians to gather in places like Srebrenica because they would be safe there, protected by the U.N. Then when the Serb forces moved in with clear intent to harm them, the U.N. forces, at the behest of Bill Clinton and others, said, "So sorry, gotta go. Peace out."

Personally, I think the deliberate execution of seven thousand civilians (including many children) under U.N. protection in the heart of Europe just a few years short of the millennium was a crisis. But I guess your mileage may vary. I mean, you didn't die so it couldn't have been that big a deal. Almost forgettable, really.

Michael K said...

"it only shows how pathetic and obtuse you are."

"To be called a dastard by a dastard is to be righteous in all eyes." Tell me where that quote is from brilliant.

What a genius !

J. Farmer said...

@Gahrie:

I am of the opinion that our previous policy of staying out of the internecine warfare that has plagued the European continent was correct, and the decision to jettison it in 1918 was the biggest foreign policy blunder in our republic's history. If Western Europe truly fears a Russian invasion, then it sounds like they have a good case for a mutual defense pact with each other. No need to piggyback off the American taxpayer. Did you want the US to go to war with Russia over Georgia? Over Crimea? So long as we are arbitrarily drawing lines on maps, is one as good as the other?

J. Farmer said...

@Michael K:

Haven't the slightest clue.

Gahrie said...

I am of the opinion that our previous policy of staying out of the internecine warfare that has plagued the European continent was correct,

Tell that to President Jefferson and President Madison.

J. Farmer said...

@Gahrie:

"Tell that to President Jefferson and President Madison."

I'd much rather have told it to Wilson before dragging the U.S. into that idiotic war.

Birkel said...

The ball of string is busy.
What international interests would be worth defending, J Farmer?

Gahrie said...

both President's Jefferson and Madison involved us in a foreign war in the Med long before Wilson.......

J. Farmer said...

@Birkel:

"What international interests would be worth defending, J Farmer?"

There are no such thing as international interests. There are national interests, and the US government's role is to protect the political and civil rights of its citizens, not play referee in foreign wars.

@Gahrie:

"both President's Jefferson and Madison involved us in a foreign war in the Med long before Wilson......."

They fought wars to protect American commercial interests and American citizens from impressment. That's a far different story from interjecting itself into foreign conflicts that did not directly involve us (e.g. Napoleonic wars, Crimean War, Franco-Prussian War, etc.) Abandoning American neutrality and intervening in the First World War was a colossal blunder.

Bay Area Guy said...

We really need Joe Biden to throw his hat into the ring. This will put enormous pressure on Hillary.

Rusty said...

Or the war with Germany,

Should we abrogate our treaties?

walter said...

"physically, I repeatedly got chills, even after my mind told my body to cut that out."

Ah..well..he tickled her Obama bone. Anyone get look at the crease in his pants?
Hopefully he didn't invoke his old essay and get "rapey", eh Meade?

walter said...

"There are no such thing as international interests. There are national interests, and the US government's role is to protect the political and civil rights of its citizens, not play referee in foreign wars."

Whew! Good thing the world is this infinite disconnected entity. (heads in sand, now)

J. Farmer said...

@walter:

"Whew! Good thing the world is this infinite disconnected entity. (heads in sand, now)"

If the only way someone can make a case for interventionism is by vague allusions to ill-defined "international interests," that should be a sign that they have a really lousy case.

walter said...

If you don't believe "foreign wars" can have ramifications for US citizens' political and civil rights...keep head in sand.

J. Farmer said...

@walter:

Which foreign wars have we fought to secure the political/civil rights of American citizens?

Rusty said...

J. Farmer said...
@walter:

Which foreign wars have we fought to SECURE the political/civil rights of American citizens?

Strictly speaking, none of them.