In every 1950s "gang rumble" genre film, there comes a point where the fighting gets more serious. This is, literally, where the knives come out. I begin with this image because, metaphorically, that's exactly where we are in the 2016 presidential campaign. The fight's getting a lot more serious, and there is bound to be some blood on the floor afterwards.
This was prominent last night, as the Republican candidates put on their most vicious debate yet. There were almost too many head-to-head tussles to count. Ben Carson and John Kasich were the only ones not scarred by the infighting, but then neither of them has a prayer of winning the nomination, so it's easy to understand why they were ignored. The rest of the field went at each other harder than we've yet seen this cycle, which certainly had some entertaining moments for Democrats who watched.
The Democratic race is also heating up, though. With less than three weeks to go before Iowa caucuses, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both dialed up their own attacks, meaning the debate that will happen this weekend (I think it's on at something like 2:00 Sunday morning -- thanks, Debbie Wasserman Schultz!) could become just as contentious as last night's Republican slugfest.
We'll get to all of that in due time, but there was one other big political event this week, as President Barack Obama gave his final State Of The Union speech. It was an unusual speech, in that it didn't conform to the "laundry list" format. Instead, the president laid out the case for his own legacy, and strongly denounced all the nonsense coming from the Republican primary race. Even more extraordinary was the Republican response from Nikki Haley, who also denounced the GOP noise level. This inspired some Republican-on-Republican hatred, the most amusing from Ann Coulter: "Trump should deport Nikki Haley." I wrote about the two speeches earlier, right after they were given (for those interested), and we're also going to devote today's talking points section to Obama's speech, one last time.
But before we get to that, we need to take a deeper dive into the state of the two presidential nominating contests. To begin, here's a quick fact-check of the Republican debate: there weren't any. Check!
Ahem. Sorry about that, but it's been a pretty good week for Democrats, watching the Republican establishment painfully come to grips with the fact that neither one of their two frontrunners is even remotely acceptable to them. If you meet an establishment Republican walking down the street, be kind to him. Living with the prospect of either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz winning their party's nod has got to be like living through some horrifying nightmare, for them. So have pity on the poor guy if you meet one. You'll recognize them by their muttering: "Jeb was supposed to have this race locked up by now!"
Still too snarky? Well, at this point, it's kind of hard not to be. There are already stories circulating that Jeb! is being quietly asked to shutter his campaign (in order to give Marco Rubio a better chance at defeating both Trump and Cruz). Even more embarrassing for Jeb! was a story about the angst of his donors right now. It included the rather extraordinary sentence:
"Hey, I need you to throw away money on Jeb -- out of loyalty," a Bush fundraiser has told donors recently.
Wow. That's just... wow. That's what the guys trying to raise money for you are saying about your campaign? Dang, that's rough.
The bigger news on the Republican side was the throwdown now happening between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Up until very recently, Cruz has been consistently sucking up to Trump, in the hopes of picking up Trump's base of support when he fails. Since Trump hasn't shown any sign of doing so on his own, Cruz has realized it may be up to him to make this failure happen. Trump, for his part, has mostly ignored Cruz up until now (while saying kind things about him occasionally), but since Cruz has caught him in the polls in Iowa, Trump is attacking right back. In fact, Trump has gone "full birther" on Cruz, which political pundits have been predicting (for a long time) would happen if Cruz ever claimed the lead. Trump's already the biggest birther around (over Obama), so it's only natural that he would play the "born in Canada" card at some point.
Democrats, of course, are watching all of this with undisguised glee, but what they're mostly failing to notice is that Donald Trump is actually getting better at running a political campaign. He's gotten better in the debates, he's gotten better in sit-down interviews, and he's gotten a lot better at deflecting attacks from just about any direction.
Don't believe me? You must then have missed, last night, when Donald Trump masterfully "played the 9/11 card." Seriously, Trump was better at it than even Rudy Giuliani ever was -- and that's really saying something (please remember that Giuliani's campaign was famously described as: "a noun, a verb, and 9/11"). Trump was much better at playing the 9/11 card than Hillary Clinton's earlier fumbling attempt (while explaining why she loved Wall Street so much). There's just no denying it: Donald Trump is getting better at campaigning.
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and pretty much the entire party's rank and file have yet to figure out how to take on Trump. They confidently feel that, if Trump is the Republican nominee, the results of the general election will be such a foregone conclusion that it's hardly even worth worrying about. This is dangerous thinking. What we're personally going to be thinking about, while watching this weekend's Democratic debate, is: "Which of these candidates would do better on a debate stage next to Trump?" That question really needs more serious attention than it has been getting. Just laughing off Trump is not going to work. Hopefully, both Hillary and Bernie will realize this, and soon.
There was other (non-Trump) news from the Democratic race, as this week the entire mainstream media woke up and realized that Bernie Sanders was running for president, and that Hillary's poll numbers were slipping. Seriously, Sanders was featured in more stories in the past week than he has been in roughly the last six months. This is good for his campaign, of course, and has helped to build his momentum heading into the first primaries.
Because of this, Hillary Clinton is getting more worried and a lot more snide in her attacks on Sanders. The cynicism she's currently displaying is rather breathtaking, but it does serve to remind folks that Clinton is a no-holds-barred campaigner (as she proved against Barack Obama, eight years ago). How you feel about this depends on how you feel about Clinton -- it could be seen as a good thing (for the upcoming general election fight), or a bad thing (Clinton saying anything to win). But we'll have more on Hillary's campaign in the awards, so we'll just mention it in passing here.
Bernie Sanders had a bit of a stumble this week, too. He's always pledged never to run negative campaign ads, and many said he crossed that line this week with an ad clearly meant to contrast his views on Wall Street with Hillary Clinton's. Team Clinton immediately pointed out that Bernie had (in their opinion) broken his non-negative pledge. Sanders, to his discredit, tried to claim that the ad really had nothing to do with Clinton whatsoever. In an interview, Sanders tried to make this case: "I think anybody who looks at that ad understands it's not a negative ad." When told that Clinton was saying it was, Sanders responded: "Well, I know that that's what Hillary Clinton says, but Hillary Clinton is not right. Did you see any picture of Hillary Clinton in there? Did you see any mention of Hillary in there?"
This is disingenuous, at best. The ad was -- to anyone who hasn't been living under a rock -- clearly aimed at Clinton. Whether it was a "negative ad" or not is debatable (if "negative ad" means "any ad drawing a contrast between two candidates" then that rules out a whole bunch of ads, to put it mildly). It's not a personal attack, or muckraking. The ad isn't trying to personally destroy Clinton over some irrelevant matter. But it is a clear contrast between Bernie and his Democratic challenger. The Sanders campaign was forced to pull the ad, and Bernie tried some more hair-splitting, by now pledging (the ad in question was a web ad) that he's still: "someone who has never run a negative TV ad in his life and never will." At the end of the day, Bernie looked like a normal politician -- but that runs counter to his image, so it didn't exactly help.
And finally, to end on an amusing note, a town in New York is the latest example of life imitating art. Or, more precisely, life imitating South Park. In specific, the episode dealing with the South Park flag. The ironically-named town of Whitesboro, New York got some scrutiny for their bizarre official image, but in the end chose to stick with their town seal depicting a white man choking a Native American. No, really -- click that link if you think we're making this up. It's absolutely impossible to read the image any other way, especially when you consider that this is actually an updated seal (the original one had the Native American almost lying on the ground, while being choked). The town says the image "depicts a friendly wrestling match between village founder Hugh White and an Oneida Indian." Um, OK. Sure, if that's what you say. We wonder, however, what the average Oneida would think about the matter.
President Barack Obama, for the second week in a row (and for his 51st time overall -- a point we forgot to make last week), is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.
His final State Of The Union speech was anything but ordinary, a creative departure from the standard format. Rather than offer up a list of legislative agenda items that would then all be completely ignored by Congress, Obama instead chose to make the case of optimism about America. He even threw in some "American exceptionalism," not that anyone on the right (who have been loudly demanding he do so for years) acknowledged it, of course. He also used his speech to promote the idea that "America is better than our politicians," a clear rebuke to all the hotheadedness on display in the Republican nomination battle.
Whenever a risk is taken, there's always the possibility it will fail. In his departure from the normal speech, Obama could have fallen flat. However, during the official Republican response to his speech, he was in fact vindicated -- as Nikki Haley struck almost exactly the same theme.
There's a new term in politics: Trumpism. Trumpism is defined as "saying things as loudly as possible, never admitting error, and diverting all attacks with clever use of the 'some people are saying' dodge." That's just our personal definition, we hasten to add, as there are plenty of others equally as valid. Barack Obama gave a stirring speech against Trumpism taking over our body politic, and Nikki Haley drove the point home for good measure.
Since our entire talking points section consists of speech excerpts, we really don't need to say a lot more here about Obama's speech. Immediately after he gave it, his job approval poll numbers begin rising, which means the public reacted favorably to his speech as well. For taking a risk and giving a very different kind of speech, Barack Obama deserves his fifty-first Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.
[Congratulate President Barack Obama via the White House contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]
While we have to give at least a (Dis-)Honorable Mention award to Bernie Sanders for his tap-dancing on negative ads this week, the winner of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award was none other than Chelsea Clinton. Chelsea is currently stumping for her mother, making her fair game in the political arena (she's no longer just "the child of a politician," in other words). Here is what Chelsea had to say about Bernie Sanders's plan to move America to single-payer health insurance:
Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance. I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we'll go back to an era -- before we had the Affordable Care Act -- that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.
Clinton conveniently fails to mention that all of those people would actually have better and guaranteed health insurance as a replacement, as indeed every single American citizen would. We wouldn't need the other programs if this were true, of course. Chelsea Clinton is a smart woman, and she knows this. There's a word for what she is doing, and it is called "fearmongering."
Here is the best response to such fearmongering:
[It is] not only wrong, but it is undermining core Democratic principles. Since when do Democrats attack one another on universal health care? I thought we were trying to realize Harry Truman's dream. I thought this campaign finally gave us an opportunity to put together a coalition to achieve universal health care.
This is wrong and every Democrat should be outraged because this is the kind of attack that not only undermines core Democratic values, but gives aid and comfort to the very special interests and their allies in the Republican Party who are against doing what we want to do for America. So shame on you, [Chelsea Clinton]. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That's what I expect from you.
We changed this quote to insert Chelsea's name. In its original form, the name read "Barack Obama," because this is what Hillary Clinton herself said, eight years ago, after Obama (ironically enough) had put out a fearmongering mailer warning voters that Hillary would require everyone to purchase health insurance.
In 2008, Hillary chastised a fellow Democrat for such attacks on the goal of universal health care. She said such attacks give aid and comfort to Republicans. She said "shame on you" and expressed her outrage at such attacks.
Now? The Clinton campaign has doubled down on the attack, rather than retract it. Look for this to be the biggest fight on Sunday night when the two candidates face each other. If Bernie's smart, he'll read that quote to Hillary's face and ask her why she's changed her position. He's already poking fun at her by releasing a signed photo of Clinton and Sanders from 1993, with the tender inscription from Hillary: "To Bernie Sanders with thanks for your commitment to real health care access for all Americans."
While Hillary herself is arguably who the award should go to, Chelsea twisted Sanders's position worse than anyone else on her mother's campaign. She knew she was misstating Bernie's position, she knew exactly how misleading it would sound to someone who didn't understand that, and she went ahead and did it anyway. This chip off the old Clinton block well deserves this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.
[Chelsea Clinton is a private citizen, and as a rule we do not provide contact information for such. We also don't ever link to a campaign site, so you'll have to search for Hillary Clinton's campaign contact information yourself to let her know what you think of Chelsea's actions, sorry.]
Volume 374 (1/15/16)
As we usually do during State Of The Union week, we're pre-empting our usual amateurish attempts at creating Democratic talking points in favor of highlighting some made by the president (and his speechwriters, of course).
Without further ado, here were the most memorable (to us -- bearing in mind it is hard to choose just seven from such a substantial speech) moments from the last Obama State Of The Union speech. All text is taken from a speech transcript provided by the Washington Post.
Peddling non-fiction
Obama started out by reminding everyone that all the doom and gloom from the campaign trail does not accurately reflect the reality of our economic situation.
Let me start with the economy and a basic fact. The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.
We're in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history.
More than 14 million new jobs, the strongest two years of job growth since the 1990s, an unemployment rate cut in half. Our auto industry just had its best year ever.
That's just part of a manufacturing surge that's created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years. And we've done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.
Anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction.
The little guy's not to blame
Obama made this point more forcefully than he has in the past -- the little guy didn't screw our economy over, so why try to pin the blame on him?
But after years of record corporate profits, working families won't get more opportunity or bigger paychecks just by letting big banks or big oil or hedge funds make their own rules at everybody else's expense.
Middle-class families are not going to feel more secure because we allowed attacks on collective bargaining to go unanswered. Food stamp recipients did not cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did.
Immigrants aren't the principal reason wages haven't gone up. Those decisions are made in the boardrooms that all too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns. It's sure not the average family watching tonight that avoids paying taxes through offshore accounts.
We didn't deny Sputnik was up there
This was one of the strongest lines of the night, and it drew a clear contrast between good old-fashioned American can-do spirit and hiding our collective heads in the sand.
And this brings me to the second big question we as a country have to answer: how do we reignite that spirit of innovation to meet our biggest challenges?
Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn't deny Sputnik was up there.
We didn't argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and twelve years later, we were walking on the moon.
Now, that spirit of discovery is in our DNA. America is Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers and George Washington Carver. America is Grace Hopper and Katherine Johnson and Sally Ride. America is every immigrant and entrepreneur from Boston to Austin to Silicon Valley racing to shape a better future.
They call us
This might possibly be the most jingoistic thing we've ever heard a Democrat say. It's extraordinary considering what Obama's detractors used to say about his reluctance to buy into "American exceptionalism." You can't get much more exceptionalist than this, in fact.
I told you earlier all the talk of America's economic decline is political hot air. Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker. Let me tell you something. The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth, period. Period.
It's not even close. It's not even close. It's not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined.
Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world.
No nation attacks us directly or our allies because they know that's the path to ruin. Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office, and when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead. They call us.
Not an existential threat
We've been waiting for quite some time to hear any politician frame the issue of the Islamic State in such a fashion. Quite a contrast to all the Republicans now quaking in fear, isn't it?
But as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages, they pose an enormous danger to civilians, they have to be stopped, but they do not threaten our national existence. That is the story ISIL wants to tell; that's the kind of propaganda they use to recruit.
We don't need to build them up to show that we're serious, and we sure don't need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is somehow representative of one of the world's largest religions.
We just need to call them what they are: killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed.
All the people, not just some
There were many similar passages which took on Trumpism and denied that it should be who we as a nation are. This was our pick, but there were plenty of others to choose from.
And that's why we need to reject any politics -- any politics that targets people because of race or religion.
Let me just say this.
This isn't a matter of political correctness. This is a matter of understanding just what it is that makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal, it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith. His Holiness, Pope Francis, told this body from the very spot I'm standing on tonight that "to imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place." When politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad, or fellow citizens, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid is called names, that doesn't make us safer. That's not telling it what -- telling it like it is, it's just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world.
It makes it harder to achieve our goals. It betrays who we are as a country.
"We the People." Our Constitution begins with those three simple words, words we've come to recognize mean all the people, not just some. Words that insist we rise and fall together, that that's how we might perfect our union.
Admitting his own failure
Obama admits for the first time that he has failed on the promise to change the "red states and blue states" back into "the United States of America." He's right -- the Republicans fought tooth and nail against everything he tried to do, and Obama himself could have done a much better job at using the bully pulpit to communicate with the public (especially in his first term). It's rare to hear any politician admit to such a failure, in fact.
A better politics doesn't mean we have to agree on everything. This is a big country, different regions, different attitudes, different interests. That's one of our strengths, too. Our Founders distributed power between states and branches of government, and expected us to argue, just as they did, fiercely, over the size and shape of government, over commerce and foreign relations, over the meaning of liberty and the imperatives of security.
But democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens. It doesn't -- it doesn't work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice, it doesn't work if we think that our political opponents are unpatriotic or trying to weaken America.
Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise or when even basic facts are contested or when we listen only to those who agree with us. Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get all the attention. And most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn't matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some special interest.
Too many Americans feel that way right now. It's one of the few regrets of my presidency -- that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. I have no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I'll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.
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