Nobody is afraid of Barack Obama (except a few Beck watchers)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Everyone in Washington was afraid of LBJ.

Rahm was, ideology aside, a fine choice because Rahm is a real hardball player. People are afraid of Rahm.

But it has to come from the top.

There is no down-side to being a blue dog right now.

All arguments about whacking blue dogs in districts where they will be replaced by Republicans as cutting-off-nose-to-spite-face are correct.

The most reasonable course does end up with Obama doing fund-raising for all these DINOs, and discouraging challengers, because they are better than the likely alternative.

And they all know that!

This is why games theory so often favors an occasionally unreasonable player.

[freddie mertz]

1. I've been thinking the same thing.

We think alike I guess.

As our avatars would suggest!

Louise Brooks, star of "Pandora's Box" and much much more.

Seen this?


http://www.pandorasbox.com/

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. She was one of a kind

[treestar]

3. Too bad LBJ isn't still alive

though of course in those days, the white men's club was still ascendant.

I don't think LBJ could get elected in these times.

Idealizing him - he's been out of office for nearly 40 years - doesn't get a damn thing done.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

4. Hardly idealizing him

He had useful traits and bad traits and sometimes they were the same traits.

A less effective president couldn't have gotten so far into Vietnam.

But as Majority Leader and as President his ruthlessness and chicken-playing ability helped him gain practical ends.

[treestar]

5. If it came naturally to him

But I don't know that it comes naturally to Obama. He has succeeded in life and reached the highest pinnacle of American ambitions and as a black man to boot. So he's going to use what got him this far.

I don't think conditions are the same now, so that strong arm tactics may not work. Cheney tried it and look where it got him.

So while maybe Obama can do things better - it's tough to judge that from where I stand - I would say LBJ isn't quite the model for improvement in his case.

[WeekendWarrior]

7. I wouldn't use LBJ as a model for anything.

The guy was generally a disaster as president, and not a very pleasant human being from the accounts I've read.

Yes, I know, the civil rights issue alone makes him an icon, and I'll surely give him credit for that. But his bungling of Vietnam puts him in the loser column as far as I'm concerned. And I lived through it all.

[cali]

6. you are so full of

being absolutely spot on here. rec.

[Orsino]

8. Blue Dogging = coasting.

We can no longer afford lazy, half-assed Republican wannabes. It's tragic--but by design--that our system makes it much easier for them to coast on corporate dollars than it is for them to win our contributions.