Old Shuck

Ya be out on the coast when the fog rolls in and two red eyes loom out of the mist, then ya know you’re with the black dog.

Frankly I’d rather deal with Nick himself.

I am personally offended that the Warren campaign did not catch fire because it’s exactly the same campaign I ran for like decades (convinced over a half dozen Pols to run my way) and…

It doesn’t work at all.

People really don’t care if you understand the Institutional problems they keep whining about and have solutions for them. They like whining, it’s what they do.

Nope, they want someone they can share a beer with and will sympathetically listen to their tale of particular woe and not say “Akron, cold beer, and ‘There, there?’. That’s IT!?”

Harvey and I have things to do… we sit in the bars… have a drink or two… play the juke box. Very soon the faces of all the other people turn towards me and they smile. They say: “We don’t know your name, mister, but you’re a very nice fellow.” Harvey and I warm ourselves in these golden moments. We came as strangers — soon we have friends. They come over. They sit with us. They drink with us. They talk to us. They tell us about the great big terrible things they’ve done and the great big wonderful things they’re going to do. Their hopes, their regrets. Their loves, their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. Then I introduce them to Harvey, and he’s bigger and grander than anything they can offer me. And when they leave, they leave impressed. The same people seldom come back, but that’s — that’s envy, my dear. There’s a little bit of envy in the best of us.

Well, they wanted to lock Elwood up and rightly so, he’s dangerous and so am I. The moment my brother, the activist, became convinced I could succeed where my surrogates had failed I was in a bar after a meeting and Budweiser was running some kind of stupid promotion around a bunch of cheap plastic glasses they advertised as a “Yard of Beer” which held the customary Pint and in fact measured a mere 24″ though the round bottom meant that you couldn’t conveniently park it once served.

U Conn Huskie! Of course I can shoot a Pint, Bret Kavanaugh has nothing on me (I draw the line at Stoli Enemas though, ick!), so I did and parked the carcass upside down (stable enough).

My brother later rescued it and I have it to this day.

The interesting phenomena was that I was an influencer. Soon enough everyone who pretended Testosterone (including most of the ladies) was doing the Mead Horn thing like they were expecting Valkyries any minute. I retreated to my customary Craft Beer (which I highly reccommend to the practicing Politician because you can signal local familiarity and kind of a Temperance/Tolerance position on ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’).

At that point, after winning actually and installing someone who was… a poor example of the efficacy of the program, I was at perhaps the lowest point of my political career with no prospect at all except suffering the failure of everything I’d ever advocated.

The first ten million years were the worst, and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn’t enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.

But you know, if you have a spare 14 Billion Years or so, people forget why they hate you. You never forget.

I want some 20 Mike Mike out on that tree line. You don’t understand. There were no survivors.

I am miles closer to New Brunswick than I was yesterday.

Warren’s wrenching downfall says something terrible about 2020
By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
March 5, 2020

Is it enough, as a presidential candidate, to have smarts and charisma, to have a clear and concise message, to even be the best debater, and most of all to be the best prepared to do the job effectively?

No, it is not. Which is why so often during this primary campaign, we’ve heard supporters of Elizabeth Warren ask plaintively, “Hey, what if we got behind the person who’d actually be the best president? Why not do that?”

They asked because the number of voters willing to do that was not what it might have been, which is why Warren has announced that she’s ending her bid for the White House.

There is a temptation to say the presidential primary process is brutal and unsparing but ultimately fair. It tests you in the way no other campaign can. If you don’t win, it’s because you didn’t have what it takes. Lots of it may be out of your control, but if you were a once-in-a-generation talent like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, you could have overcome any obstacle cast before you. Nobody deserves the nomination; either you win it or you don’t.

Which is true as far as it goes. But we can’t consider Warren’s candidacy without seeing sexism, both in fact and in perception, for the hindrance it was for her.

To be clear, sexism isn’t the only reason Warren will not be the Democratic nominee. There are many reasons. She had a few stumbles along the way, as every campaign does. There were some decisions she could have made differently.

But her campaign and the particular way it failed tell us a lot about how gender operates in presidential politics.

Let’s consider that Joe Biden is the likeliest candidate to be the Democratic nominee, despite the fact that he has run an absolutely abysmal campaign and is so erratic that sympathetic Democrats regularly tell one another, “I saw Biden give an interview, and he was completely coherent!” as though they were praising a toddler. Biden won a sweeping victory on Super Tuesday even in states where he did not campaign for a single day or have an organization. There has never in my lifetime been a winning presidential campaign that was so weak on so many dimensions.

And yet Biden is cruising toward the nomination. Why?

Because of a collective decision among a significant portion of the Democratic electorate that he is “electable,” i.e., that other people will find him inoffensive enough to vote for. As Michelle Cottle noted, one poll last year asked Democrats who they were supporting, and Biden was in the lead; when they asked who they’d rather see as president if they could wave a magic wand, Warren was in front.

You’ve probably heard that again and again: Voters saying Warren is the one they liked the best, but because they didn’t think she was electable, they were supporting someone else, most often Biden.

That perception didn’t just come of nowhere. Yes, people might be thinking of their sexist uncle or their “traditional” parents, but they also heard it again and again from the media, creating a self-reinforcing loop. Sure, Warren can put policy issues into terms people can understand like no other candidate; sure, she has thought more seriously about the powers of the government than anyone else; sure, her anti-corruption message resonates with all kinds of voters. But she just can’t win.

Then there are all the people who said they didn’t like Warren but couldn’t quite put their finger on why. Maybe it was her voice, or that she seemed too aggressive, or that she wasn’t “authentic” enough. Not because she’s a woman, though! I’d support a woman, I would! Just not her.

Throughout the campaign, Warren tried to find subtle ways to deal with a problem she couldn’t have been more aware of (just as Obama carefully crafted a strategy to deal with voters’ reaction to a black candidate). But nothing seemed to work in the face of the relentless obsession with electability.
…
Yes, female candidates have been more and more successful at running for all levels of government; this was particularly true in the 2018 midterm elections. But the presidency is different. It’s about authority, and power, and command. And still, in 2020, millions of Americans simply cannot wrap their heads around the idea of a woman in that job.

So unlike Biden or any other male candidate, being better wasn’t good enough. Warren had to be perfect, and of course she wasn’t.
…
Think back to Hillary Clinton, who after a lifetime of being bludgeoned and battered by every sexist preconception, trope and backlash, finally got within reach of the ultimate reward and opportunity only to have to face her exact opposite, an utterly unprepared buffoon and raging misogynist who was literally on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women with impunity. And even after getting 3 million more votes than him, she still lost.

Four years later, we had a presidential field full of talented and accomplished women, and surely, so many of us thought, one of them might prevail. Yet they fell, one after another, until only the most talented and accomplished among them was left. And in the end she too was judged inadequate.

So our more than 200-year-long streak of electing only men to the presidency will continue. Perhaps we shouldn’t have expected anything different.

I refuse to let assholes and imagined public perception dictate my actions.

I hate to say it but Joe Biden is a loser.

Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio will crush him like a bug because Joe Biden has no soul, not even a racist greedy one.

Browncoat to the end baby.

Sir, I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government – every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

And we’ll fight them with the butt ends of broken beer bottles because that’s bloody well all we’ve got!

The Institutional Democratic Party has committed suicide. It’s the only way they can let Republicans win.

Ash heap of history assholes.