Matt Taibbi: Campaign 2016: The Dumb Season Starts Early

[marmar]

(Rolling Stone) Thanks in part to a Beltway gossip network that loves chattering about the Clintons and just can't wait until 2016, and thanks in part to a punditocracy that is perennially covering the same story, regardless of year (i.e. the next presidential election), the groundwork is already being laid for the moronic typecasting that always goes on at the outset of the Big Race.

The ball got rolling this week with a massive feature in the New Republic. Written by Noam Scheiber, it's about the potential threat to presumptive 2016 favorite Hillary Clinton ("Congressional Republicans have spent months investigating [Hillary] like she already resides in the White House," writes Scheiber) posed by a would-be "populist" candidacy of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Scheiber's basic point is that voters are really pissed about the economy and the behavior of big banks, and that Hillary, who along with her husband have been serial gobblers of Wall Street money and finance-industry water-carriers since before House of Pain released "Jump Around," may in 2016 have something to fear from Warren, a candidate who has built a career pointing out what total assholes the Clintons' chief financial backers are.

Warren, Scheiber writes, is so far out of the political mainstream on the finance issue that she was once willing to submarine a Banking Committee hearing by violating longstanding Beltway decorum – an unwritten rule in which members of Congress may "rant and rave at length, but generally abstain from humiliating appointees, especially from their own party." ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/campaign-2016-the-dumb-season-starts-early-20131113#ixzz2kdHEy24t

[libdem4life]

1. Well, isn't this just Ignorant Insipid Idiocracy...complete with photos of two accomplished women.

Reminds of a well-known Republican quote "Nattering Nabobs of Negativity". At least that didn't caption photos of two men.

[Laelth]

2. This is an excellent essay. Highly recommended. k&r

Check this:

The latest linguistic fad is to describe a candidate as being prone to making "populist appeals," a concept nearly as nuts as that ostensible single horizontal line of all possible beliefs. Only in the Beltway do they have to come up with a special term to describe the inexplicable (to them) phenomenon of a politician who advocates for his actual constituents, instead of just whoring along the usual career track like everyone else.

And this:

I have no idea if Warren will run, or if she'd win if she did. She has my vote, but that's beside the point. What's interesting right now is how consistently offensive the media's analysis of her "populist" approach has been.

-Laelth

[davidpdx]

3. It is interesting

[Laelth]

4. Kick. n/t

-Laelth

[bemildred]

5. It is not Sen. Warren that is "out of the political mainstream", that's bullshit. nt

[marmar]

6. He was referring to the Beltway political mainstream.

[bemildred]

7. I am objecting specifically to the use of the term "political mainstream" for the DC bubble.

That's like calling the French Court in 1788 the "political mainstream" of France at the time.

[TheKentuckian]

8. The sad difference is that effectively it is because many and maybe most

folks play follow the leader and either don't want or have given up on the whole concept of self governance through representation.

I don't like that, in fact I am repelled by it to my soul but that is the reality.

Admittedly, many don't seem to like this dynamic but the bulk seems to have just dropped out of the game in reaction and most that haven't are just resigned to whatever their favored segment of the beltway does because the only plausible alternative is even more repellent yet we have elections and transitions of power so there is no monarchy to bring down in that exact sense or at least most are blinded to it because the government rotates around even if power stays in 5 he same precious few hands.