Category Archives: 2016 presidential campaign
Bitter Clingers, Deplorables, and Fox News
On the campaign trail President Obama attempted to transfer his base of support to Hillary Clinton. He pleaded,”I’m not on the ballot but my policies are.” And he warned that he’d take it as a “personal insult” if African Americans failed to turn out for her. Well, Obama Nation didn’t show and Hillary lost. Trump was elected president with majorities in the House and Senate.
Another shellacking.
In a Rolling Stone interview the president analyzed the shellacking. And he concluded his lost legacy was due to a failure to communicate with middle America. That would be the Coal miners he and Hillary promised to put out of work. The Bitter Clingers. The Deplorables.
Fox News
That and Fox News. “Part of it Obama said, “is Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country.” Personally, I hardly noticed Fox in bars and restaurants in my midwest chunk of the country. But maybe that’s just me.
Progressives are also blaming Fake news for Hillary’s upset.
A month ago a federal court ruled that Rolling Stone defamed a University of Virginia administrator with malice. The administrator was awarded $3 million.
The magazine had published a fake news story about rape.
Nancy Pelosi House
Nancy Pelosi won 134 votes to Tim Ryan’s 68 to hang on as House Minority Leader. Ryan is taking credit for giving her a scare. But winning 68% of the vote sounds like a landslide to me.
Maybe they should demand that Jill Stein do a recount.
Nancy Pelosi
And maybe Nancy Pelosi should give the Democratic party a scare. Under her leadership they lost 63 House seats in 2010 and 13 more in the 2014 midterms.
Republicans now own “the White House, and the Senate, and the House, and 33 governorships and 68 (of 98) state legislative chambers.”
Court of Public Opinion
FBI Director Comey recommended that Hillary not be prosecuted by the Justice Department. But he presented her case on national TV anyway. A verdict was rendered on election day. Hillary was convicted in the court of public opinion. Her sentence was loss of the White House.
She’s Suffered Enough Already
Now President-elect Trump has issued a get out of jail free card. He doesn’t want to see her prosecuted in a court of law either.
Court of Public Opinion
Meanwhile, some Democrats don’t believe there were enough Deplorables in the court of public opinion. They want a recount.
Green candidate Jill Stein is leading the charge. She wants a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. She’s raised more money so far than she did for her presidential campign.
Oops. She can’t guarantee the money will go to a recount.
Stand Up Guy
In 2009 President Obama tried a “reset” with Russia.
During a 2012 campaign debate, Mitt Romney called Russia the “biggest threat” to The United States. To which Obama cracked wise, “the 1980s are calling, they want their foreign policy back“. He tutored Romney that the cold war was over.
Stand Up
Also in 2012, Obama whispered to Russian President Medvedev that he could be more flexible after the election. Medvedev promised to transmit the message to Vladimir.
Now, after the 2016 election, he’s lecturing the world that Trump needs to “stand up to Putin.”
“I don’t expect that the President-elect will follow exactly our approach,” Mr Obama said.
“But my hope is he does not simply take a realpolitik approach and suggest that … if we just cut some deals with Russia, even if it hurts people or even if it violates international norms or even if it leaves smaller countries vulnerable, or creates long-term problems in regions like Syria, that we just do whatever’s convenient at the time.”
Not My President, Didn’t Vote
I came across this item last week. Seventy percent of protesters arrested in a Portland, Oregon riot didn’t vote.
But they can keep their parents’ health plan.
