Official 2012 Democrat Gloating/Republican Tears Thread

The context dump Repoman posted probably helps people as much as trying to parse the statements by tone.

I understand why there's a disconnect between people saying "most obvious racist observations ever" and "wait isn't he just stating demographics with a whiny GOP-is-sad perspective" but reading the context and taking note of the whole makers-and-takers ideology swirling through the GOP should help clear that up. There was an analagous issue with people really failing to be outraged by the "47%" spiel because they didn't know the super creepy ideology it was riffing off of.

I kind of agree. He didn't do a good job of phrasing it, and I never got the sense that he was racist, but he kind of holds the distinction on Fox News of stripping away political correctness from his speech. I think he was speaking frankly, but when you hear someone on Fox talk about people wanting something, or about demographics and white establishment, it's hard not to color that with the prevailing (educated) opinion on how Fox generally operates.

I also don't think he looked upset. Images of him being upset are cherry-picked still frames. The dude is still a more traditional, religious conservative and that's part of what makes him pretty shitty in terms of being an actual journalist or a quality pundit, but I'm not so sure that he said anything wrong.

You're right, but he's been doing that for years now. He's one of those people that thinks that there were "good old days" where family units meant something (not in the respect that it was a man and woman, but in the respect that there was much less single parenting). There's still no other pundit on Fox that would let someone have a reasonable discussion about medical marijuana, or gay marriage and the unrightful discrimination of children of gay parents (two of his highlights, really), or have the balls to "debate" Jon Stewart in more of a playful setting.

A: "People want things"
B: His other other remarks on the same issue,
C: Google the "producers and parasites, makers and takers" despair-gasm all over the right and tell me that's not the "people" "want[ing] things" he meant.

If you're going to be talking about America's ethnic/cultural/political course in a "politically-incorrect" way - as if that's ever really added value - first try not to be Bill O'Reilly in the first place and second don't chuck in a callout to the "our society is being destroyed by subhuman parasites" ideology currently wafting around.

Are there any democrats here that don't want things? I want some things.

Typically I would agree but for the fact that it's pretty damn funny and Akin's wife says some fucking awful shit herself

I consider shitty people open targets. As the Bible says "Fuck those guys."

If you mean that could be parsed "they want things [have interests and views on policy too and now those are relevant]" rather than "they want things [largess] [unlike Republicans]" that may be semantically possible but I think it's being wildly optimistic. A major post-election theme of GOP crying has been that this is the Bad End of an Ayn Rand novel.

As has already been pointed out, lots of democrats want things. Things like healthcare, equal rights, etc. etc. Those are not the things Bill is referring to. What he's referring to, pretty obviously, is all of those lazy women and minorities who just want government handouts because they're too lazy to work for a living, and so on. They didn't vote because they have real political beliefs, they voted because they want FREE OBAMA PHOENS AND WELFARE. He's speaking the language of racists and bigots, couched in his usual "I'm just a learned man saying reasonable things" act. Oh boo hoo hoo, the "traditional" america where those groups knew their place and old white men like Bill O'Reilly decided everything is winding down. Heaven forfend.

I think he would have come right out and said it like that. He's been much more frankly biased than that.

I've got a capital L Libertarian friend who is directly blaming Obama for his joblessness. He's a mining engineer who has been out of school for about two years now. He wanted Romney to be president just because Romney is so much more coal-friendly.

And he's afraid Obama will waste money giving black people reparations.

Maybe he should actually move to Australia. I hear there's a coal baroness there touting her job-making abilities or something.

It could be that he's just reading the sort of Spenglerian woe stuff Victor Hansen and all these other people are putting out and he's just kind of saying "dangit, I guess this is sort of it" in a less convinced or comprehensive way. A statement that touches base with but doesn't articulate the full "race war death nest" cri de coeur could be either dog-whistle or flirtation, or various other things, but people are used to seeing that stuff in print on the fringier right, not on air.

It doesn't, incidentally, leap off the screen at me, because I basically see the whole US right-wing mainstream as completely riddled with this nonsense. The nominee got caught throwing out more explicit references to the whole "America dragged down by the parasitic mob" ideology, he just didn't mention race. At that point it's not going to surprise me to see the same shit, clumsily, tentatively, halfheartedly, whatever, coming from known clowns like O'Reilly.

Here's my gloat:

Appearing now in the LP forum: Let's Play Atlas Shrugged!

In a nutshell, that describes me well.

The cracks in the facade started showing, for me, in the 2008 election cycle, with no remorse from the far right regarding how greed and laissez-faire capitalism had brought us to the brink of financial ruin. It escalated when the Republicans seemed more interested in political brinksmanship and rhetoric than statesmanship during the first "fiscal cliff" crisis.

The 2012 election just disgusted me with regard to how far to the right the GOP had gone, bringing the class-division, misogyny, latent racism and homophobia to a boil, while offering up a vision of America that classified the majority of my family* as no-good teat-sucking lay-abouts amongst the 47% leeching off the government, backed by a platform that boiled down to fear, lies and "I'm not the other (scary brown) guy".

I'm a middle-aged, upper middle class, educated straight Christian white man and that screams ought-to-be-voting-GOP (and I generally did). But they've left me and my family behind in their to slavish service to the ultra-rich backers (corporate and otherwise), PAC's paying for their campaigns and to the ultra-conservative Fundamentalist Christian Right trying to shove their beliefs down the rest of the country's throat.

Not any more. Call back when you've stopped foaming at the mouth, GOP. Instead, I expect them to double-down on the lunacy. (GO HOME, GOP! You're DRUNK.)

* "lazy" people like my parents who worked for 50+ years paying into the Social Security and Medicare systems they are now "mooching"; my brother who is disabled and is told he's somehow going to live on $535 a month (HAHA, my parents and I have to help him monthly, thanks Government you big-hearted POS); and finally my other brother who used to make good money as a welder, but has struggled since the Bush years taking whatever temp work he can get, or delivering pizzas or WHATEVER he can, and got a little unemployment help for a while because the company he worked for used those laissez-faire Bush-era-government-backed tax loophole policies to close down his plant and take the jobs overseas. But, hey, that's OK! The rich owner is doing fine.

Exactly. I appreciate the notion of giving people the benefit of the doubt, but if you don't look behind the literal meaning of "they want things" then you've rendered his entire statement a tautology. While I generally hold a fairly low opinion of Bill, I don't think he's stupid enough to waste airtime making obvious and non-controversial points. The very clear subtext of his statement is that in "traditional America" when people wanted things, they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and woked for them, while in Obama's America, they just expect handouts.

But if people actually watch it doesn't that break the illusion right there?

Romney may be more "coal-friendly," but I bet he isn't any less friendly to shale gas, which has been the main downward driver of gas prices relative to coal. Ironically, more government regulation/restrictions on hydrofracking would probably help make coal more competitive relatively.

I grew up in a conservative republican home in northern Idaho and am a former Christian. As I discussed in the "Republican Friend" thread, I feel like the party left me behind sometime during the Bush era and it's steadily been getting worse. Obama the centrist seems to me like he's only a smidge to the left of where moderate, reasonable republicans of the 90s were.

So are there Republicans here? Maybe not anymore. But it's not like I don't understand where the conservative (or what used to be conservative) line of thought comes from, and I don't think I'm alone in that here either. An echo chamber would assume that nobody here "gets it" or understands the counterarguments. I do, I just reject them because my experience has led me to a place where I don't assume the givens behind those arguments as facts anymore. But I understand how you get there logically. I understand where the difference in basic beliefs about rights of mankind, altruistic intent, and what the social contract means can lead intelligent folks to very different conclusions on the same issues.

It absolutely kills me that the word conservative in a political sense has come to describe an amalgam of deeply religious forces that actively want to codify their belief systems into laws that will force everybody else to live like they live and corporate interests that cynically see the conservative movement as a way to increase their own power and wealth. It used to stand for an ideology with a point that was relevant and worth considering in regards to crafting effective public policy, but the noise has drowned out the signal so much that it no longer serves the purpose of counterbalancing the excesses of the Progressive movement with common sense. I honestly find it sad when people refer the current Republican party as conservative, because it only is if you twist that ideology into what it could be at its worst and most base permutations.

Also, the first Hindu, Tulsi Gabbard, was elected to Congress in Hawaii. Take that, angry old white male suckas!

I would like to go on record that once upon a time I, too, was a Republican, and voted so.

And then George W Bush happened (although I voted for his first term), and I was like fuck that. Then when I almost came back, because I really like McCain, Sarah Palin happened.

The GOP should have bucked all trends and had McCain run in 2004 instead of GWB for his second term. I would have been all up on his nuts.

Finding out later that he said, when asked to run in 2008 (IIRC), "Why the fuck would I want to lead this party?" was the final nail in the coffin, one that already had several nails pounded into it.

They have done literally not one single thing to make me respect them more since. Far the opposite. They represent themselves as clueless bigoted close-minded old white guys or drones swayed by religion or kept women or just idiots, none of whom know better. These people squawk about entitlement without a hint of irony and bleat about socialism with no recollection of even recent history, much less distant in terms of America's lifespan.

I am not saying the Democratic party is the holy grail guaranteeing us paradise on Earth someday, I am just saying their actions have been far, far more reasonable.

I won't even bother mentioning their words compared to the GOP, because that is like comparing Shakespearean sonnets to Insane Clown Posse lyrics. Insane Clown Posse. That suits the GOP as a moniker far more than two fat guys from Detroit.

And I'm not just saying this because a reasonably hot girl literally walked out of my place right when we were going to have sexy fun times because she found out I wasn't a staunch conservative. But it sure helped.

You're so blue your balls are blue.

Well HELLO there...

Hey Brad, I've got a new defense for you. You just accidentally forwarded the wrong purity test.

Lum used to be registered Republican.

Huh, I had no idea she was Hindu. That was not a big part of her campaign platform. And it's not like the homeless guy she destroyed in the general was running many ads against her. Seems like this is a bigger deal nationally than it was locally.

Why would it be?

I dunno. Christianity usually is. If her opponent had even a remote chance it maybe would have come up.

Yeah. How YOU doin'?

Sorry. I shouldn't objectify an obviously smart and accomplished woman who has just been elected to Congress. Mea culpa.


dayum

I agree.

That said: saaaaaaaaaaaay!

I am a straight humorless feminist and even I am like "why hello, miss," so obviously everyone gets a pass today!



(when in doubt, you can say the being smart and accomplished part is what really gets your motor running, rite?)

Apparently Mazie Hirono is the first Asian-American female and the first Buddhist and the first person born in Japan in the US Senate too. I was aware that she was a Buddhist during the campaign at least.

Dungsroman, you're a better man than I for turning down sexy fun times for your beliefs.

I did date a girl a while ago who I'm sure I'd be at political odds with now
Luckily the relationship didn't get too far, and I began to see past the facade when things like the N-word escaping her lips clued me in to her true nature.

Reread that, she turned him down, not the other way around.

Oh, and she's got a sense of humor too, I can't find the source, but someone asked if she was a lesbian as well, and she responded, "No, but nobody is perfect"

Read it again. I don't think HE was the one turning it down over a political disagreement.

I believe the whole story is in the relationship (or maybe dating) thread, but I'm too lazy to look for it to link it.

It is in the relationship thread, and totally worth reading.

What I meant is he could have kept quiet until AFTER the nookie, but was "strong" enough not to?

Ah, fair enough.