Wed, 10/15/2008 - 10:07pm — vastleft
Digby muses that "it would be nice if Democrats didn't feel the need to define their base as liberal freaks. One tends to lose interest in helping those who wipe their feet on your face after a while."
“I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls,” Obama told [Matt Bai]. “If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me, right? Because the way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?
In Obama's world, liberals don't have to live by lattes alone.
There are also "Chablis-drinking limousine liberals."
Idea-man Ronald Reagan "spoke to the failures of liberal government," and heck, "a lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities."
There's simply nothing "liberal" about good politics, Barack'll tell ya:
"Oh, he's liberal, he's liberal," Obama said, mimicking his critics. "Let me tell you something. There's nothing liberal about wanting to reduce money in politics. That is common sense. There's nothing liberal about wanting to make sure [our soldiers] are treated properly when they come home . . . . There's nothing liberal about wanting to make sure that everybody has healthcare. We are spending more on healthcare in this country than any other advanced country, but we've got more uninsured. There's nothing liberal about saying that doesn't make sense, and we should so something smarter with our healthcare system."
Go, team!
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The man says it himself
If Obama is not a liberal, I have absolutely no reason to vote for him.
Oh, now I understand
Been liberal is bad, very very bad! Liberal
is a swear word. That's the same message that the likes of Limbaugh and Ingraham seem to propagate.
But it's not just the word.
It's what you do and who you are that is wrong. Read the New York Times? Freak. Latte drinker? Freak. Drive a car designed to protect its inhabitants? Freak. Forget about just believing in gun control -- you don't have a gun? Freak. Effete? Let's not forget what that's code for -- just ask Donnie McClurkin (or any number of other people Obama pals around with), effete=gay, the biggest freaks of all.
Who would want to vote for people like thatWho would want to be people like that? {shudder}If We keep apologizing for the term...
...it'll never be acceptable. It's why I make sure to describe myself as a liberal. Too many folks use 'progressive' as an apologism for liberal.
Oh Whut's So Wrong About Throwing
People 'n things 'n libruls under the bus some more.
I mean, it's a BIIIG frickin' bus.
Ain't it.
Librul = Feminazi
= Baaaaad
I'm a proud liberal
And in some of the circles I run in that means either frequent and ugly arguments (which I do engage in) or just "letting it go" (which I rarely do, apologies to Mr. "YOU NEED ME ON THAT WALL!").
It pisses me off to no end that sanctimonious Obama supporters lecture me and wring their hands that people like myself, who have been uncloseted liberals their whole life, may not prostrate themselves before Barack Obama.
Meanwhile, he says shit like this, continously, constantly, needlessly (the campaign is over Obamabots, he won), and we are supposed to just shut our mouths, lie back and enjoy it.
Fuck
that.
-----------------------------
Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites
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Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites
Hey, the Dems can't wipe their feet on MY face!
I'm already under the bus, so they can't get at me! Haw!
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
It's Obama's main tact, everything is an attack on him.
Call him a liberal, you're labeling him. Say he has a funny name, you're a racist. Question his church and you're a faith-intolerant. He's Mr. Teflon, he's untouchable and he's ours. Aren't we lucky?
I love this job!
I love this job!
Disconnected quotes
are difficult things to assess.
Unlike a written statement, using the language of writing rather than the language of speech and knowingly composed in the absence of vocal tone and facial expression, people are generally careful to stay away from certain kinds of constructs that just don't carry well as black lines on white paper. That's the reason - one of the reasons - that politicians talk the way they do; they know they'll be quoted and every sentence will be likely be read but probably not heard. They can't count on the aural and visual cues we all employ during speech to carry through their true meaning.
What I try to do with quotes like these, drawn from conversation rather than a formal statement, is to put them in the speaker's voice and play the scene back in my head. Admittedly, in doing so one can construct any voice one likes but why not be fair and balanced, as it were, and assume a voice you've heard the speaker use before. I've heard Obama hundreds of times now, and it isn't all that hard to put his voice to these words.
What context to put these quotes in is clearer if you consider the next sentence he spoke in the Matt Bai NYT piece, one not reported by either VastLeft here or by Digby:
They're not going to get it from snippets extracted from longer conversations either. Context is all, and presenting extracts free of their contextual meaning will very often confuse and mislead. It is a favorite tactic of Rovian political combat, very tempting and a mistake that needs considerable vigilance to avoid.
Consider the number of modifiers employed by Obama;
This isn’t a denigration of Liberals or Liberalism; it is a mockery, a damning mimicry (the very word used to describe Obama’s vocal tone in the second quote VastLeft provides) of the VRWC
/FOX approach to attacking the Left and Obama
When I do that inner voice experiment what I hear, what I understand these words to mean, is a sarcastic jab at FOX and the VRWC machine that constantly denigrates the Left. If you would, please take a moment to re-read the passages and hear them as though spoken in a sarcastic tone, mocking the mouthpieces on FOX. In the second quote, put a sneering tone to the word liberal every time it appears.
Does that change the meaning for you, VL? Because it makes a huge difference to me. I don’t see Obama attacking Liberals here, not at all. I do see him deriding the nastiness of the VRWC mouthpieces, and that to my mind is very much a good thing.
Sorry, BIO, it doesn't work
He's (again) assembling a liberal stereotype and then (again) distancing himself from it.
"Liberal
" is clearly baggage in his eyes. In yours, too, IIRC, because you keep explaining that Obama needs to be a chickenshit, liberal-bashing centrist because the country is so inherently rightwing.
He is a politician
No argument there, and yes he does posture from time to time for votes and that is nothing new. Wish it weren't required but there you are.
My view of him, expressed here many times, is that he is pretty much what he says he is, slightly right-of-center on balance. He is in many ways a conservative of the Old School, of the Rockefeller wing of that philosophy, and not far distant from either Bill or Hillary Clinton. Between the constraints of reality and his own inclinations I do not believe that his eventual policies will be greatly different from what we would have seen from her.
What he isn't is either an repressive authoritarian reactionary or an activist progressive liberal, and yes he does have strong things to say about the conflict between the two that hurt my ears as much as I am sure they pain yours. It is not the point of view from which I see the world.
You know full well I do not revere him as a messiah or any sort of icon, but I do see him as a stone in the surrounding muck upon which we may take the first step of a thousand-mile journey. For that, and that alone, I am at least for now grateful for his presence.
Perceptions, eh?
don't remember having heard Obama needs to be a
chickenshit or liberal-basher.
Haven't actually heard Obama do much of that, either. Do I agree with him and his statements? Mostly not wholly, but I find him far more palatable than the alternative.
That's as close as I can come to defending either candidate, these days (and Cynthia McKinney has about as much chance of getting elected as I do of getting a paycheck as Chuck Norris' stunt double).
Have my own issues with Obama, but then again, I had issues with Hillary Clinton too. I have issues with John Edwards' behavior, but that's because -- lucky for me -- I've never had anybody throw themselves at me while I was married to somebody else, or under a lot of stress and far from home.
The good guys didn't win in the early rounds, this time.
How do we stop the bad guys from winning in the final round?
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18