Ted Cruz Primer

Ted Cruz upset Donald Trump in the Iowa Caucus. Who is he? What do you need to know about our possible next president?

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  • I hated Joe McCarthy just as I was taught to in public school. That is until I learned that declassified FBI files ultimately supported his charges.

    In the recent past I would’ve defended Cruz by pointing out that his GOP Senate colleagues hate his because they’re RINOS, which is true, but now I’m all but convinced that he is bought by TPTB and is their trump card against Trump. Heh. If their obvious establishment candidates can’t beat Trump, perhaps a pretend outsider can.

    • I hated Joe McCarthy just as I was taught to in public school.
      Public school teaching to hate McCarthy is familiar and quite ironic. After all, to impart hate rather than understanding is itself right out of McCarthy’s playbook (basically Orwell’s “3 minute hate”). So kudos to you for emancipating yourself from that drivel. Just perhaps you can find a way to do so in a less narrowly self-serving way? Let me explain what I mean:

      That is until I learned that declassified FBI files ultimately supported his charges.
      McCarthy had two pet projects / witch hunts. First, to deny any influence whatsoever to Communists/Libertarian Socialists/Democratic Socialists/Left Liberals (“I don’t care what kind of Communist you are”). Second, less widely known, deny any influence whatsoever to gays. This went so far as to include detailed provisions for countries to receive USAID to purge their government payrolls including UN staff of all suspected homosexuals over decades, as had been done in the US.

      I have acquaintances and family members who were directly impacted by this. “You see my brother was attracted to the Communist party in his youth, but quit in disgust when they turned Stalinist. At one point he stopped getting commissions and had to quit as an architect, work as a waiter, and had to sell off their house. He was likely blacklisted, as were many of our friends in the artsy alternative circles we moved in.”

      Would you support a government crackdown against Ted – who has actually advocated revolution? You do know that the FBI/NSA could rather easily crosslink your ID on rall.com to your IP to identify you and then make your life difficult in many little ways you could never quite be sure of – just for posting here – and you’d never get to contest those “charges”, however “supported”. Would you then not find your Libertarian voice and rail against big government and the surveillance state? How is that any different from the FBI amassing libraries worth of documents through domestic spying all paid for by taxes through their version of high technology bureaucracy back in the day?

      While it is commendable that you have moved on from the propaganda of hate towards McCarthy, perhaps you could find it in your heart to not condone police state methods that put the boot on people’s necks for their opinions, whichever they are, even when you do not agree with them, or think may slow you down.

      While you may not think you would get immediate benefits yourself from their projects, perhaps your own intellectual environment has been diminished because of the Red Scare as well. You seem to hold an eclectic mix of opinions and perspectives, some Right Wing, some Libertarian, as well as have shown an interest in Leftist ideas (though perhaps mainly to argue against?) by frequenting this site. Du to the Red Scare, e.g. Socialist Libertarian ideas have been driven underground, even Social Democratic ideas for that matter. Instead they have been all tarred as Communist (which we’ve been taught to “3 minute hate” rather than understand). Consequently, the candidacy of the New Deal Liberal Bernie Sanders constitutes something new, the return of “Socialism” to a country which largely has lost its understanding of one of the main political movements of the modern age.

      How exactly did any of this benefit you?

      • Andreas,

        I suppose my beliefs are eclectic, but there’s nothing incohesive or difficult to grasp about favoring free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values. These are the ingredients that made the West so great though they’ve fallen out of favor long ago. Everyone, rich and poor, wants an unfair advantage from gov’t. It’s hard to convince people it’s not the gov’t’s place to meddle in economics. It’s even harder to get elected without promising to fix everything.

        Indeed, not so long ago, most of my worldview could have been drawn from only one or two sources. I feel like I’m remaking the wheel. I’m just starting to appreciate how much I took the roundabout way and how ignored the greatest thinkers of our past really are. Monsieur Bastiat explained a century and a half ago that the correct response to the corporatists was not socialism but the cessation of all legalized plundering by *any* class.

        *All* libertarians are Rightwing. Socialist libertarians are just the most blatant example of the Left co-opting and rebranding Rightist labels to try to fool people into buying the same old tired Leftwing ideas. And an ordinary American may not know many political dictionary definitions or have read many works, but he does understand something much more important: all Leftists believe he is not fit to run his own life. I am aware of many of the nuances on the Left, but I have to say there isn’t anywhere near the level of difference Leftists believe there is. On the Right there absolutely is, but to hear it from the Left, we’re all either racist rednecks who love war or fat cats who love war. I know my opposition. It’s most “Progressives” who don’t.

        In the early 1920s, the Bavarian gov’t had multiple chances to stop Hitler. Even when they did ban the Nazi party they rescinded it. He was a dangerous subversive. He wanted to take away the rights of those who guaranteed his–and of course he ultimately did.

        We take free speech in America further than most other Western nations. A bit too far. Guaranteeing the rights of those who seek to take yours away is not principled. It’s just stupid.

        You asked what I thought about the fact that Mr. Rall is subversive. I think you well know that this is a matter of perspective and can never be universal. One man’s patriot is another’s traitor. In my view, the American gov’t is the traitor today. But in the Cold War, American Communists weren’t simply ordinary people with fringe beliefs. They were usually aided and abetted by hostile foreign forces. That’s the difference. There is no comparison.

    • You were taught to hate Joseph Raymond McCarthy in public school, «Jack Heart» ? Sure you were – your version of history certainly possesses all the credibility of that of your idol ! You wouldn’t care to provide a reference for those scabrous textbooks and those dastardly teachers that devoted such effort to teaching little innocent «Jack Heart» to hate good-old Tail-Gunner Joe ?….

      Henri

      • @ Henri
        To be fair, teaching of history can be exactly that. You’re supposed to come out disliking Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Joe McCarthy (them) and liking Lincoln, Gandhi, and MLK, or whatever version of them they put on a pedestal (home team).

        Being in the profession myself, it’s actually fairly hard to teach in a manner different from this. There is a poem about this by Erich Fried (“Kinder und Linke” in German). It begins like this: One who teaches children right wing ideology – is right wing. One who tells children left wing ideology – is also right wing. Fried goes on to say that he who tells children not to think anything at all, or that it doesn’t matter what they think… you can guess where he is on the spectrum… whereas one who instead tells them what they themselves think and that they might be completely wrong about things, may, perhaps, be on the left.

        I remember my history teacher telling us to read Berthold Brecht as gospel (whose writings are of course all about rejecting gospel but that irony was lost on my teacher) seeing that we were obviously all culturally deluded into thinking history is about kings and queens.

      • Andreas5, I requested evidence for the statement made by «Jack Heart» to the effect that students (at what level ?) are taught to hate Joseph Raymond McCarthy. Since you are in the profession – what profession ? Teaching history at the secondary school level ? – perhaps you could present such evidence ? That US schoolchildren are taught to hate Stalin and Mao is not particularly difficult to believe, given the nature of the references to these historical figures in the corporate media in that country, but how much space is devoted to Mr McCarthy – who, nota bene did far more damage to the United States than either of the above….

        Henri

      • History is typically taught as the rote memorization of dates (starting with 1492)

        This is at least partially due to the fact that it’s much easier to grade a multiple choice test than an essay. Also due to the fact that it’s nearly impossible to teach someone how to think in an overcrowded classroom situation – always assuming that the teacher is capable of critical thinking themselves.

        I was long out of school before I gained an appreciation of history as an ebb and flow of cause and effect. THEN it got interesting.

      • Starting humanity’s – or rather, inhumanity’s – history in 1492 seems a fairly safe bet in these trying times, CrazyH, but I thought the good bishop Ussher had established that the world began on 4004 BC. But on the other hand, those were foreigners and as such, did not count…. 😉

        Henri

      • @henri – Jack sees the Communist Agenda being pushed in school at least as often as did old Joe.

        They begin in grade school, teaching the communicative property of addition! Then there are Social Studies, an obvious front for socialism!

        Contrary to popular opinion, though, I didn’t run into that in college. My calculus proff didn’t bring up any references to how the commies do derivation; my statics and dynamics teacher didn’t even mention how loads are measured in the USSR; and heat transfer seemed to be thoroughly uninterested in the political body being heated.

        In fact, the only professor who even brought up Communism and/or Socialism was my economics professor. Then only long enough to give us the basic definition, sneer in its general direction, and go back to preaching about The Wonders of Capitalism for the rest of the semester.

      • «They begin in grade school, teaching the communicative property of addition!» Well, CrazyH, my training in mathematics probably predates your own by at least a decade or more, but back when I studied addition in such domains as the real numbers, it was rather commutative, i e, a + b = b + a. Alas, I seem to have missed that particular operation’s «communicative» property, but as I said, that was in pre-historic, unenlightened times…. 😉

        Henri

      • dammit, Henri – you want to ruin a perfectly good rant with facts???

        Need I remind you that this is a political forum? Facts are strictly optional.

      • CrazyH, I stand corrected. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa !…

        Henri

      • You want me to remember what American history textbook I had in high school, henri? Are you for real? You want to know the names of my local teachers?

        Tell you what, buy any high school American history textbook, and I’ll bet it has a section devoted to what a sad, shameful time McCarthyism was for America.

      • @Jack – and /w/h/e/n/ if you get into college, you’ll learn about something called “Burden of Proof”

      • Andreas,

        That poem is incredibly convenient because if it were true, then there is no such thing as a Leftwing propagandist. But of course a pervasive facet of Leftist ideologies is the need for a creation of a “New Man.” So children must be taught how to think as a “New Man,” which we have seen in a plethora of countries.

        In the US, calls for universal preschool are increasing today. Leftists know they need to get children away from their parents as early and as often as possible. This also explains the decades long war against parental rights–why a woman in SC can have her 9yo daughter taken away for letting her play in the park alone or why German parents can lose their kids for posting anti-immigration sentiments online. And this is in addition to the massive divorce industry.

      • CH,

        There’s no way for me to prove that. It’s an anecdote from years ago. I didn’t steal my history textbook. If you really find it that hard to believe, that’s pretty sad, but take it or leave it.

      • «You want me to remember what American history textbook I had in high school, henri [sic !]? Are you for real?»Let us, see, «Jack Heart». You claim to be 27 years old – and you’ve already forgotten the name/names of that textbook/those textbooks that «taught» you to «hate» Joseph Raymond McCarthy ? Per-senile dementia ?…

        Am I «for real» ? Indeed I am, «Jack Heart», and I suspect that you also are for real ; i e, that there exists a figure who posts messages to this thread under the pseudonym «Jack Heart». Reality’s a bitch….

        Henri

      • @ Jack Heart

        Apologies, I did not mean to imply incoherence. Rather that one may get at more interesting vistas the larger the pool of ideas one can draw from.

        And an ordinary American may not know many political dictionary definitions or have read many works, but he does understand something much more important: all Leftists believe he is not fit to run his own life

        Then you have not met too many leftists ;-).

        (Btw do you really think Ted’s writings show that he believes ordinary Americans aren’t fit to run their own lives?)

        This was exactly my point with the Red Scare – which had a strong anti-intellectual component – making us all poorer intellectually. The only (remotely) leftist/left-liberal ideas left standing in the U.S. mainstream may indeed look a little like “Nanny State” positions compared to the rest of said mainstream.

        we’re all either racist rednecks who love war or [dupes of] fat cats who love war

        I agree that this overly simplistic prejudice/smear is all too pervasive among U.S. (left-)liberal sources (from the NYT to the Daily Show). In some ways similar to “the right” saying that “the left” thinks he – or she – isn’t fit to run her own life 😉

        You asked what I thought about the fact that Mr. Rall is subversive

        No I asked how you would feel about Ted being black-listed by government or worse. Which is what McCarthyism has done to people like him as well as to those who merely associated with the likes of him, such as me and you for reading his stuff.

        [This is unfortunately a rather timely question since arguably something like black-listing by government, or at least a government agency on the state level, did happen to Ted last year.]

        Would you still (as I think correctly) complain that McCarthy doesn’t get a fair hearing in underfunded understaffed school classes – or would you (also) add that McCarthy would likely come out similarly maligned if said fair hearing were given?

        For that matter, can you look me in the eye and tell me that people I know from my family and friends were justly blacklisted two generations ago for associating with people whose views McCarthy disapproved of?

        You say they were usually aided and abetted by hostile foreign forces. Do you really think there was an organized infiltration into the U.S. on a scale remotely comparable to “soft power” offensive that the U.S. has been engaging in all over the world? If so, nothing of that money trickled down to my family ;-).

        I think a leftist in the 1950s U.S. would have considered him/herself very lucky to get the equivalent of Ted’s occasional gigs from RT or Telesur. Isn’t the up-rooting of people’s livelihoods that was the Red Scare a little bit of an overreaction? Wouldn’t it be unjust even if there had been funding equivalent to U.S. soft power projection or modern day think-tanks?

        Btw, arguably the most successful transnational organization to influence U.S. police was clearly not the Kremlin, the Mitterand government, the Monthly Review, or the Situationists ;-), but the Mont Pelerin Society. For some reason I suspect you wouldn’t commend a government division (say in Yugoslavia) for banning MPS members and their affiliates and purging their publications while compiling libraries worth of innuendo about their citizens’ lives through spying and snitching.

        “That poem is incredibly convenient because if it were true, then there is no such thing as a Leftwing propagandist.”

        Yes and no. Taking this poem seriously is also incredibly challenging, as the means are considered more important than the ends. According to it, teaching (or anything else for that matter) in an authoritarian style is authoritarian, irrespective of content or effectiveness.

        This is e.g. why I am conflicted about e.g. CrazyH’s challenging you on the burden of proof here. While he may (or may not) have a point, the means are the adversarial “Show me!” (with the implication that you will fail to meet the challenge). I don’t feel much good will come of it, irrespective of its merits for “winning” the “debate”, itself arguably a somewhat authoritarian frame. Indeed, teaching itself may be intrinsically authoritarian to an extent, most forms of it at any rate.

        But of course a pervasive facet of Leftist ideologies is the need for a creation of a “New Man.”
        Striving for a new society and new forms of relationship may indeed be what unites the left (or for that matter returning to an older form of more egalitarian relationships inspired from the practices of Quakers to indigenous Americans, Celts, small bands of hunter-gatherers and so on).

        I think you again exaggerate an extreme minority position in the left: while we tend to take education very seriously there is a rather huge spectrum, all the way from Stalinists, to properly funded schools after the Scandinavian model, democratic schools, free schools, and de-schooling.

      • Jack typed with one finger, “There’s no way for me to prove that.”

        Sure there is – buy a textbook, or check one out of your local library. Search online for textbooks, many of them will post their table of contents if not their entire text.

        But once again, you’ve made a broad, sweeping statement that you are utterly unable to back up. There’s a word for that, it’s called “losing” – and someone who does it consistently is called a “loser.”

      • @andrea5 –

        I definitely remember coming out of school thinking that Hitler, Stalin, & Mao were bad guys. McCarthy, not so much – he was merely a footnote; and they definitely didn’t mention all the lives that were ruined. Neither did they mention that there’s nothing illegal about being a communist in the first place.

        They also tarred Stalin, Lenin & Marx all with the same brush. I was taught to hate commies – but was never told exactly what communism is. Upon doing a little reading on my own, I found that Marx sounds a lot like Jefferson in many respects.

        Jack is always posting about how schools try to teach our poor, innocent children to be socialists, yet never posts any examples. It certainly doesn’t match what I remember, and I sincerely doubt it’s changed all that much in the ensuing years.

        He has an annoying tendency towards argumentum ad ignorantiam. Even so, my earlier taunt was specifically aimed at his suggestion that Henri should buy a book to validate Jack’s opinions.

      • Andreas,

        Yes, I do believe Ted’s work shows he doesn’t believe people can run their own lives. But as I said, that’s not to pick on him in particular. It’s a central tenet of Leftism. There’s so many examples: that people can’t negotiate for their own salaries, shop for their own insurance, build safe houses, etc. There’s hardly anything a person can do without having to involve gov’t in the US and there’s still far more encroachment possible–and advocated for! As far as health care, if you were to ask me if I’d prefer the current setup to single payer, I’d probably have to say it’s a toss up. I mean have you ever had to fight gov’t bureaucracies? At least against in the private sector you have a chance, particularly if you have a lawyer.

        Friedrich Hayek often said the more a person has been educated, the greater the likelihood he is an idiot. I wouldn’t believe it had I not observed it myself so often. Intellectuals develop a hubristic belief in their own knowledge, power, and sometimes even infallibility while losing most of their sense. Some things, such as economies, cannot be controlled. They forget that human beings have limits.

        The Kremlin was extremely successful in infiltrating America’s institutions. It was a clash of civilizations. They weren’t messing around. If an American Communist were not already an agent, he would be a prime target for contact. I certainly will not condemn those you know, but I will say that more thorough investigation was needed and never happened.

        And today many people of Eastern Europe know that Leftist ideas don’t work because they experienced their catastrophic failures, but Americans have not. The Ruskies may get the last laugh yet.

        I have never met anyone more concerned than I with the legal principle of innocent until proven guilty. I think though that blacklisting someone from certain gov’t jobs *only* might be acceptable though I don’t know how that should work. No one should have his livelihood completely threatened and absolutely not from guilt by association. I am concerned with *actual* cases of national security (particularly since I view that as one of the precious few legitimate duties of gov’t), but we all here know just how often nat’l security is cited in order to excuse abuses of power.

        For McCarthy in class, I don’t think it was my teacher so much opining. It was the book that gave me a poor impression, but it probably also had at least a little to do with my extreme Leftist beliefs at the time. The gist of the story was that it was a witch hunt, in America we can believe whatever we want, Eisenhower refused to speak against him, and soon McCarthy was disgraced.

        Now you’ve really got me thinking. I might’ve studied him in junior high instead. I’m trying to think what year. Maybe more than one year. Junior year AP American History almost certainly, but I think I was already familiar with him.

        CH and henri,

        I would be truly startled and almost alarmed if anyone remembers their textbook name for a particular class a decade prior. Even at the time how many of us pay attention? Burden of proof–I get it, but I hardly expected it would be something I would be asked to prove. Should I visit my high school? I said you could check if you were so inclined because I am not and am perfectly OK with not being believed. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened here.

      • «I said you could check if you were so inclined because I am not and am perfectly OK with not being believed. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened here.» One can’t but wonder if our highly educated «Jack Heart» has ever heard of the term «special pleading» ?…

        Henri

      • I was throwing out a personal anecdote, henri. Not trying to prove any argument. No worries though, I won’t pounce on you for proof of your anecdotes. 😉

      • @Jack – “Burden of proof–I get it, but I hardly expected it would be something I would be asked to prove.”

        Well, that’s kinda the point Jack, you *say* a lot of ridiculous things. If I told you that there was a unicorn in my back yard, would you believe me? Or would you want proof?

        e.g. “schools teach socialism” – I’ve never seen a shred of proof of that. More to the point, if you were taught that in school, how did you reach adulthood with no clue what socialism actually is? Did they really try to convince you to live in a dystopian police state? That makes no sense whatsoever.

        Here’s another jaw dropper: “I do believe Ted’s work shows he doesn’t believe people can run their own lives.”

        Okay, you know where to find Ted’s site. You know how to use Google. You can’t say you don’t remember – so please provide three examples of Ted’s work which shows he doesn’t believe people can run their own lives.

        I think that it’s the right wing who doesn’t believe people can run their own lives. But unlike you, I can provide solid examples. The right wing wants to tell you what you can smoke, what superstition to believe in, who you can marry, how you can have sex and who with. Those are very personal choices, are they not?

      • Andreas,

        I forgot to mention something you might find interesting regarding teaching and authority. Are you familiar with Erich Fromm? He was a humanist and anti-authoritarian Leftist. In Man for Himself, he differentiates between what he calls rational authority and irrational authority. IIRC, rational authority is held by a teacher. A student must “submit” in order to learn. Irrational authority is the kind claimed, as you might suspect, without reasonable justification of greater knowledge, and therefore has no rational basis.

        CH,

        Tell you what: I’ll point it out in Ted’s work from now on–just for you! It’ll be easier than looking backward. You’ll disagree when the time comes anyway. You always have dismissed evidence I’ve posted. It’s why I’ve grown tired of bothering. Nothing gets past your ideological blinders.

      • > You always have dismissed evidence I’ve posted.

        You’ve never posted any evidence of Ted’s authoritarianism. That’s the problem. This post is a typical example – you simply assert that something, somewhere, somehow backs up what you say.

        C’mon big man, all you have to do is find a couple of links. You’ll finally get one over on me. Poor little crazy man shown up by big, bad, Jack Hole. I’ll be all embarrassed and crying while you’ll have a raging three-inch hard on. Won’t that feel gooooood? Oh,yeah, you’ll be fapping to that one for weeks.

        Or, you can lose.

        Again.

        As always.

        Loser.

      • It would seem, dear «Jack Heart», that <a href="http://s49.photobucket.com/user/mowdak1/media/image_zpsgu3az0lu.jpg.html&quot;you are incapable of taking your own advice….

        Henri

      • Again my apologies ; Ted’s website doesn’t always work according to HTML rules. In any event, here the URL to which our dear «Jack Heart» linked and which so well describes her/his efforts on these threads : http://s49.photobucket.com/user/mowdak1/media/image_zpsgu3az0lu.jpg.html ….

        Henri

      • @ Jack

        I do find it interesting when we have totally different perceptions, which is a large part of why I enjoy this conversation. And I realize that should I be talking to an e.g. “Austrian Economics” crowd I would probably be the one who is constantly out of step, coming from “left field” 😉

        Still, sometimes I do get the sense you’re working backwards from an assumption, here that “the left” = Soviet influence = central belief about people being incompetent to run their own lives.

        Not really sure where to begin, as it is an in-joke in left circles that nothing is prone to splits like the left. The “people’s front of Judea” vs the “Judean’s people front”, vs the “Popular Front”, etc. from Monty Python’s Life of Brian were directly modeled on Left parties in the UK in the 1970s. There are constantly calls on the left to learn from the right about presenting more unified front, such calls being of course themselves divisive 😉

        Recently I think e.g. both the Trotskyist and the anarchist currents have begun to successfully forge more stable alliances (while constantly quarreling about which of their ways to do so is best ;-). Note that both Trotskyists and anarchists were actively (and sometimes brutally) suppressed by the Soviet Union (which was shunned by Social Democrats). Thus when the Soviet Union collapsed, not much changed on the Left as disillusionment had been occurring for decades already.

        On the personal responsibility side: did Ted think people couldn’t take care of themselves when he invited strangers to a joint adventure, traveling by bus through Afghanistan at the brink of war? Btw, while I generally agree with Ted’s perspective and appreciate his humor, when he pulls stunts like this I part company… in short, I find him to be ultra-individualist compared to me. Perhaps it’s a cultural difference between Europe and North America.

        You make it seem that all this is still insufficiently individualistic. Perhaps they should have traveled in a loose band of Mad Max type buggies instead of a bus (such a commie vehicle) to convince you that they would place trust in one another? 😉

        On a more serious note, your charge that the left is synonymous with Managerialism does not really resonate with me at all. While there are some strands of the left who admittedly have flirted with Managerialism at least temporarily, such as old school Social Democracy and old school Leninism, others, especially anarchism, are essentially grounded in a rejection of Managerialism.

        And who is actually planning he (unequal) future of the world as we speak (using corporate structures very much reminiscent of good old central planning), from writing thousand of pages worth of “free trade” rules, to laying out transport logistics, shopping malls, and McMansions, decree how to write apps for the commercialized internet platforms, and set “performance targets” for every job from flipping burgers to publishing scientific reports?

        The only ones on the left who pull this crap are the Blairite and Clintonite “New Left” who are increasingly regarded as sell outs to the right by most people (and hopefully keep getting their ass handed to them in internal primaries).

        I know you’re probably against many of those things as well, but this only goes to show that “the right” isn’t monolithic. What will convince you that the left isn’t either?

      • @andreas5 –

        I stand in awe of your patience. Did you say you were a teacher? If so, I’d bet that you are very good at your job.

        Your analysis is, of course, correct. It’s our embrace of diversity which weakens us politically. But then again, that very embrace is a defining characteristic of liberalism.

        In the final analysis, I’d rather lose while on the side of goodness and light, than win for all the wrong reasons.

  • “Tail Gunner Joe”

    In porn circles, “Tail Gunner” refers to one who ::eh hem:: sails the Greek isles, uses the back door, packs the fudge, etc, etc.

    If elected, one can be sure that Cruz will uphold that fine tradition for all of us.

  • Ted Rall, I am sorry that Ted Cruz has ruined the name Ted, but it’s just so and I think you should accept it and move on with a new name. You may need to pick a name with less negative associations in the wake of this calamity. Adolf? Genghis? Khan?<—(Star Trek reference)

    • alex_the_tired
      February 10, 2016 7:33 AM

      Speaking of “Star Trek.”
      Clinton’s campaign reminds me, strongly, of the last episode of the original series, “Turnabout Intruder.” It is, truly, a massively sexist episode. Even at the time, it must have been cringeworthy. The villain, Janice Lester, can’t be a starship captain because she’s a woman (that’s said, outright, in the episode).

      Anyway, in Janice Lester’s case, it turns out that she can’t be a starship captain because she’s simply not competent to do it. So she swaps bodies with Kirk: her mind into his, his mind into hers.

      And, as a man, she immediately goes space-nuts. Full Capt. Queeg. All that’s lacking is a demand to scan the sector for the missing space strawberries. The crew almost mutinies. If you can get a copy to watch, do so. And every time the name Janice Lester is mentioned, just whisper to yourself, “Hillary Clinton.”

      Looking at the precinct-level results out of N.H. must have been particularly embarrassing for such a high-level campaign as Hillary Clinton was expected to run. In the four precincts she won (sez the NY Times site, reporting 92% of the turnout):
      She won Millsfield 2-1. That’s the actual vote, not a ratio. She got two votes, Sanders got one. (I’d love to see someone demand a recount, just for the response by the officials.)
      She won Waterville Valley 55-54. Again, a one-vote win.
      Bedford’s vote count was 1,705-1,657. A 48-vote, 1.4% victory.
      The night’s big score for HRC’s campaign. The metropolis of Windham, pop. ~13,000. A 59-vote, 2.8% victory (1,049-990) there.

      You don’t have to be a political genius to connect the dots on all this. It isn’t even about party politics. It’s just looking at what motivates voters and what the candidates are saying and doing.

      Sanders has tapped into a deep, deep well of resentment and anger.
      Clinton is attracting scandals like a magnet pulling in metal filings. (E-mail, speech transcripts, Iowa raw data). Jesus, I’m waiting for them to link her to the Grassy Knoll.

      I would be surprised if Sanders doesn’t close Clinton’s lead in Nevada down to the single-digit percentage points (which, at this point, would probably be fatal to the Clinton campaign) and does something similar in South Carolina. And from there, I suspect Clinton’s campaign will simply fall apart. It will be a phenomenon for the ages, a milestone for students of political campaigns: the A-bomb ad, the first televised debate, Willie Horton, Dukakis-in-a-tank, Bush Senior vomiting in the Japanese official’s lap, Shrub wearing a flight suit and pretending to be all gwown-up.

      And to make this about Cruz. I don’t see how Clinton can come in first against Cruz, unless it’s in a list of last names in alphabetical order. She simply cannot win because:
      1. she will not carry the Sanders campaigns young voters (they’re apolitical as far as party politics go; they’ll just sit it out).
      2. she will not get the sweeping effect Sanders would have to rebalance the House and Senate. A whirlwind has to win in order to close the gap in the House for the Democrats.
      3. she is not just the most-hated woman in politics to the Republicans, she is the most-hated person in politics to the Republicans. She will motivate hundreds of thousands of Republicans to get out and vote. “Twelve feet of snow and tornadoes on the way? I’ll walk to the polling station then. If I don’t make it back, at least I voted against Clinton.”

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