the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

as i remember it, there wasn't anywhere near as much foaming "they're destroying america!!!" panic w clinton than there has been with obama. clinton got impeached, sure, but there was a grinning, gameplayer's distance about the whole thing.

contenderizer, this is false. Untrue. I can tell you because I read and heard a lot of the nonsense at the time. Plus, there's always the entertaining tome The Death of American Virtue published in 2010 that records the bleatings of the right wing in luscious detail.

A list of the accusations published or aired by the pre-Internet media: HRC and Bill Clinton ran a Murder, Inc in Arkansas that they transferred to DC, as evinced in the "suicide" of Vince Foster; Clinton as rapist; HRC as socialist bitch-hag.

fly over THIS! *d-generation x double crotch karate chop gesture*

this went on for eight years, and perhaps the most grotesque thing Bill Clinton forced upon a left wing that despised him was forcing them to defend him against the calumny hurled day after day in Congress, talk shows, talk radio, and so on.

none of that was as 'respected' as the Birth Certificate Debate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UTK0-sRjOo

yeah jeez that chicken hawk David Brock wrote a book of Clinton slash fiction.

the reason why a lot of folks who might've voted for Nader in 2000 remained on the Party Reservation was PRECISELY b/c of the constant stream of demented nastiness that had been directed at Clinton, Gore and anyone to the left of Limbaugh. as in, "you'd have to be CRAZY to do anything that would let those people take charge." and after the Contract with America, the GOP takeover in 1994, Newt as Speaker (there's a reason why someone like me who's thinking of sitting out Obama v. Romney would get out and vote Obama had Gingrich won the GOP nomination), Monicagate and a zillion other things there was good reason for this mindset.

maybe Teabag shit wasn't as bad then as now, since Clinton isn't black ("first black President" challops notwithstanding). but it was still pretty fucking awful.

after all, it was the 2000 election that turned Paul Krugman from a neoliberal, somewhat Gabbneb-esque type into what he is today.

People will disagree: the vilest nonsense said about Obama lacked the vehemence of the personal attacks on Clinton. The right wing didn't merely question Clinton's ability to govern -- they called him a rapist and monster. I don't ever remember reading any GOP satrap calling the Obama marriage a sham or picking on their daughters' looks.

which is why the likes of Trent Lott puckering his jowls and smelling the fragrant memory of two good ol' boys sittin' on the porch amuses me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/us/politics/08clinton.html

it's also why some of us (OK, me) are immune to "lesser of two evils" talk wr2 Obama. we've heard it before or (in my case) we used those arguments ourselves ... and look at where it got us.

if Bill took more personal venom it's bcz he was the first hippie "sex addict" president.

I mean at least JFK had the decency to come from money

maybe Teabag shit wasn't as bad then as now, since Clinton isn't black ("first black President" challops notwithstanding). but it was still pretty fucking awful.

yeah, i generally agree. to my mind there's a hysteria and vitriol directed at obama that's by no means new, but that does seem somewhat novel in its ubiquity. hooks in w stuff like nutbag arapaho sheriff (and arizona bigot sinkhole in general), birthers, obama as muslim, obama as communist, endless racist everything to generate the impression of a sea of foaming psychosis that i just didn't experience quite so intensely during the clinton years. maybe i just didn't notice, i dunno. takes me back to the peak years of "moral majority" influence under reagan, tbh.

Clinton was loathed, man; the guy had no friends in town. As grotesquely as the right wing commentariat has described Obama's centrist presidency, I still often read squibs about the president's great charm and intelligence (e.g. Tom Coburn, Paul Ryan, Krautgotterdmmerunghammer, George Will).

The right wing has done this since 1936. Also:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/images/history_pic2.jpg

No internet meant a nineties consumer was limited to three broadcast and a few cable channels, but there was no escaping the noise about the perfidy of the Clintons. I had arguments with my father, loud ones, in which he insisted that Clinton was a worse president than Nixon because he betrayed his family.

My father, a die-hard conservative who believes in abortion rights and has always thought Reagan a smiling idiot, has acknowledged he was a fool.

Yeah, I think the moral majority element was key. The Evangelicals influence has certainly waned (first, by neo-con patriotism, then by tea party/recession reactions). So you'd use "RAPIST MONSTER" because that's what would get people going. There's also the element that Obama really doesn't have anything in his personality to be that kind of 'moral degenerate', so instead it's been all about all those things contenderizer just mentioned there.

There also always felt like an element with the Clinton stuff of those twins in the Simpsons, asking if Lisa is gonna marry a carrot. They just threw every little bullshit thing at him, and when one of them stuck it was like Lisa saying "yes, I'm gonna marry a carrot" and they jumped for joy screaming "SHE ADMITTED IT".

Still, I don't remember the violent rhetoric that gets heard at various tea party/Republican events back in the Clinton days. Somebody telling Santorum to imagine Obama when he's firing a gun, or Nugent's talk of beheading, or all the various other instances feels pretty new. Like instead of the moral rot of Clinton, we have a genuine insurgency in the White House seeking to overthrow the country. Like he's some sort of one-man sleeper cell.

I think it really peaked when Beck was still on Fox and he was spending five hours a week with charts and chalkboards explaining how Soros was using Obama as a puppet to organize a communist rising in Europe and an Islamist rising in the Middle East so they could combine, attack the US, and create a New World Order.

I dare you to watch ten minutes of The Clinton Chronicles.

maybe i was too young and just missed all the violent rhetoric then.

Still, I don't remember the violent rhetoric that gets heard at various tea party/Republican events back in the Clinton days.

the militia types (pandered to by Ron Paul), the talk about Ruby Ridge and Waco, Jesse Helms opining that Clinton had better never appear at any military bases in his state, etc.

GOD..."Ruby Ridge" triggers a host of unpleasant associations. Just like "Webster Hubbell."

My father, a die-hard conservative who believes in abortion rights and has always thought Reagan a smiling idiot

so who does he vote for now?

my dad is 75; clinton was the first democrat he ever voted for. now he can't say the word 'republican' without adding the phrase 'fucking assholes'

i remember one Thanksgiving argument w/ my Dad in 1998, where he was rambling on and on about how Clinton's behavior with Monica Lewinsky had tarnished the Oval Office & was unbecoming of a President & "how dare he do that in OUR White House?!?"

then again, Dad also goes off on similar tirades when the topic of Governor Christie's boorishness comes up and he loathed Nixon. so at least he is consistent in his old-school views of the proper decorum of elected officials.

He votes for Republicans because he believes in anything-but-Dems (he did vote for Bob Graham).

what is his top issue (since it evidently is not abortion)?

the militia types (pandered to by Ron Paul), the talk about Ruby Ridge and Waco, Jesse Helms opining that Clinton had better never appear at any military bases in his state, etc.

yeah, i remember. still seemed more isolated, less desperately unhinged and violent. like what gubke says about "those twins in the simpsons" rings true to me. during the clinton years, the wingnut stuff felt more like a game, the charade of outrage as "business as usual" strategy (and sop to the fringe). during the obama years, the outrage feels more incoherent, panicky and organic, seems to have taken on an independent life of its own.

part of the difference is that jesse helms was an asshole, but not an idiot. his successors are far more likely to be both

what is his top issue (since it evidently is not abortion)?

Taxes and federal encroachment, i.e. taxes.

He and Mom recognize that their support of access to abortion means they're persona non grata in the GOP. Mom, like Betty Ford and Barbara Bush, will say, "I'm conservative; the government has no right to tell me what to do with my body."

do you have siblings? what do they think?

(sorry, not trying specifically to grill you, just curious)

and if they vote gop regardless, how persona non grata can they be?

My younger and married sister doesn't vote; her husband's a conservative who's curious and empathetic about his brother in law's gay life.

and if they vote gop regardless, how persona non grata can they be?

One doesn't discuss abortion. Cubans are closer to neocons: bedroom matters don't interest them.

hmm how curious

there wasn't anywhere near as much foaming "they're destroying america!!!" panic w clinton than there has been with obama.

Oh lord! You just weren't hanging out in the correct places, then. The foaming at the mouth over Clinton was EPIC among the right wing conservatives. Because of my situation and exposure at the time, I saw far more of the Clinton hysteria than I've seen with Obama. Far more.

what were the criticisms? like, why were good conservatives supposed to hate clinton? i remember vince foster and whitewater, of course, but i never got the impression that many people seriously believed that he'd had anyone killed, or that whitewater was any worse than minor-league venality. when the lewinsky business came up, a lot of conservatives got all extra-frothy about clinton's moral turpitude, but the outrage seemed at once personal ("he disgusts me and doesn't deserve to be president") and strategic ("we can use this to take him down").

with obama, it seems as though they consider him a literal enemy of the state, like he's actively and intentionally trying to destroy both america and "the christian religion upon which it was founded". he's not just a bad, undeserving president, he's a hitler-level monster who must be stopped before he institutes godless communist tyranny. or so it seems to me.

nah man, people absolutely believed that shit. They believed the swift boating of Kerry too.

you guys are reminding me of Alvy Singer's parents arguing whether the Atlantic or Pacific is the greater ocean.

seems like the Pacific in a walk I wld think

more volcanoes for one thing

sicker waves too

Atlantic has a better class of lobsters

Are we giving the Atlantic credit for the Mediterranean?

oh why not

If you were over the age of, say, fifteen the Clinton criticism was drip drip drip nonstop for eight years. If there was a break it happened in late '99 and 2000 -- when the right wing said fuck it and concentrated on electing Bush -- so maybe that's what contenderizer means.

http://blogs.todayonline.com/forartssake/2012/04/19/we-rat-on-tsai-ming-liang-and-his-muses/#more-5057

nice interview, about a new film, living next door to Lee Kang-sheng & his theatre work, in case anyone's been wondering what he's been upto. he had another film, The Diary of a Young Boy in development for a while that I think's disappeared.

I saw What Time Is It There? again recently. so wonderful.

If there was a break it happened in late '99 and 2000 -- when the right wing said fuck it and concentrated on electing Bush -- so maybe that's what contenderizer means.

i was talking more about tone than amount or consistency of criticism, but i think we understand each other pretty well at this point, and just happen to disagree

They bayed at some of his last-minute pardons, though, and rightfully so.

yep