Obama’s “permission structures” seem to have gone awry
Commenter “Dax” and others have pointed out this piece in Tablet by David Samuels entitled “Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment: How Barack Obama built an omnipotent thought-machine, and how it was destroyed.” It’s very long, and quite a few bloggers are writing about it. However, I found it ultimately unsatisfying because I think that although parts of it are brilliant it somewhat misses the point.
For example, here’s Samuels’ description of what David Axelrod – whom the author sees as absolutely central to Obama’s success both in Illinois and on a national level – did to further Obama’s political career:
Permission structures, a term taken from advertising, was Axelrod’s secret sauce, the organizing concept by which he strategized campaigns for his clients. Where most consultants built their campaigns around sets of positive and negative ads that promoted the positive qualities of their clients and highlighted unfavorable aspects of their opponents’ characters and records, Axelrod’s unique area of specialization required a more specific set of tools. To succeed, Axelrod needed to convince white voters to overcome their existing prejudices and vote for candidates whom they might define as “soft on crime” or “lacking competence.” As an excellent 2008 New Republic profile of Axelrod—surprisingly, the only good profile of Axelrod that appears to exist anywhere—put it: “‘David felt there almost had to be a permission structure set up for certain white voters to consider a black candidate,’ explains Ken Snyder, a Democratic consultant and Axelrod protégé.
I find that somewhat peculiar in terms of what I know of Obama’s political course in Chicago. His success actually depended on a number of other things, which I’ve chronicled in many posts. Chief among them were knocking out all his political rivals in the Democratic primary on petition signature challenge technicalities, and Axelrod’s greatest assistance involved releasing embarrassing court records of his opponents’ marital strife. Very old-fashioned stuff, although Axelrod had great allies in the conventional press to rely on to spread the word. Another aspect of Obama’s early career, this time on the national level, was avoiding challenging black incumbents such as Bobby Rush, and running in districts more white.
So no, I don’t think that Axelrod got people who were racists to change their minds and vote for Obama. Axelrod’s tactics helped the very person – Obama – who was uniquely positioned to exploit white voters’ desire to prove their supposedly post-racism beliefs. There was a host of voters who were eager to virtue-signal how incredibly tolerant and open-minded they were, and Barack Obama was the perfect vehicle for demonstrating that they really had overcome anti-black racism. Obama, the “clean and articulate” black person (one of Biden’s more unfortunate phrases but one of his more revealing), was the candidate who appealed to this impulse the most.
And yes, during the Obama and “Biden” administrations, businesses and social media and the MSM parroted whatever the Obama administration promoted. This certainly amplified the message, but I don’t think it convinced people not already disposed in the direction. If that’s what meant by a “permission structure” than I guess the phenomenon did occur, especially with phenomena such as gay marriage. But I think that the most important element was not giving permission but rather making agreement obligatory lest one be called a bigot and ostracized in various ways. So it wasn’t so much giving permission to agree; it was withdrawing permission to disagree.
But I don’t recall the public being in favor of Obamacare prior to its passage (see the early years in this chart). As for the Iran deal, also discussed at length in Samuels’ article, I don’t think the public ever bought into it. Only the party most faithful accepted any rationale for the Iran deal – and of course the ever-compliant MSM. So Obama didn’t enter into those things by convincing the public, whatever the media said and however the media helped. He accomplished them through Congressional machinations with the help of confederates such as Pelosi, and in the case of the Iran deal by ignoring any requirement that Congress approve it.
Biden was simply not as adept at any of this, even if he’d been in full possession of his faculties (which he was not). And although Obama was pulling strings behind the scenes, it was no longer working. Much of the public had found in Trump a spokesperson who was remarkably plainspoken and in the position of being an adult who functioned much as the child in the Emperor’s New Clothes story: Trump said what he actually saw and for much of the public it was what they saw, too, and felt relief at finally hearing someone say it loud and clear and in a non-mealy-mouthed manner. Plus, by 2024, the public had seen the left in all its manipulative power-mad glory, and increasing numbers of the public didn’t like it.
The American people have gotten mugged by reality, and that’s a pretty powerful experience.
Obama’s “gaffe” during that fundraising dinner back in ’08 may have actually helped him with certain groups of voters. I’m thinking that Obama’s crack about people “clinging to guns, religion, and antipathy towards folks who are not like them” caused a reaction, especially among suburban women, who thought “oh no, I don’t want to be like those icky proles” and at that point decided that the only thing they could do was vote for Obama. I used to be surprised, but I’m not so much anymore, that people vote with the expectation that if there happen to be any negative consequences from their political choices, they will be felt by someone else, not themselves.
It’s very long, and quite a few bloggers are writing about it. However, I found it ultimately unsatisfying because I think that although parts of it are brilliant it somewhat misses the point.
–neo
I read about half of the article and got frustrated and impatient.
Concision. Clarity. Omit needless words.
To the extent I understood, I wasn’t persuaded.
_______________________________
I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
–J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Hobbit”
So it wasn’t so much giving permission to agree; it was withdrawing permission to disagree.
I haven’t read the article, but I was a bit perplexed by the label “permission structure” and agree with neo’s above statement. I immediately thought of the concept put forth by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book “Skin In The Game.”
Very simply, this tagline from a book promo encapsulates it:
Minorities, not majorities, run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities imposing their tastes and ethics on others.
I would add, “extremely stubborn minorities” or “intractable” to replace the merely stubborn sort. Think religious zealotry.
So it wasn’t so much giving permission to agree; it was withdrawing permission to disagree.
I haven’t read the article, but I was a bit perplexed by the label “permission structure” and agree with neo’s above statement. I immediately thought of the concept put forth by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book “Skin In The Game.”
Very simply, this tagline from a book promo encapsulates it:
Minorities, not majorities, run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities imposing their tastes and ethics on others.
I would add, “extremely stubborn minorities” or “intractable minorities” to replace the merely stubborn sort. Think religious zealotry.
Sorry. I was getting “internal server errors” trying to post. You may delete the first one.
Before there was Obama there was Carol Moseley Braun.
In terms of character she was (arguably) worse than Obama. But she was a dumbass and consummately lazy hence accomplished nothing as a senator from Illinois — apart from voting in lockstep with her Democrat colleagues.
White liberal voters loved her because . . . well, you know.
These points may have made him passable but I’m not convinced he was the Messiah the media made him out to be. I would like to see someone write a book telling about how lucky he was to run against 2 awful candidates. McCain acted nobly while a POW but what else did he have going for him? Zero. He certainly wasn’t articulate. He had no interesting ideas. How many people thought “what we need is John McCain running this country”? It was gaff after gaff, e.g. https://youtu.be/JIjenjANqAk. As to Romney, was there ever a campaign with more pulled punches? I have read that no candidate has ever won reelection with Obama’s economic numbers. But wooden Mitt couldn’t or wouldn’t cash in on the opportunity. He just allowed himself to be a punching bag. These two possibly set the stage for an Alpha like Trump. I can’t be certain but maybe people wanted someone who would counter punch every time you threw one at him.
I attributed Obama’s win due to four things, in descending order of impact.
1. People had fallen in love with the President on “24,” David Palmer played by Dennis Haysbert. He was the perfect president — well-spoken, even tempered, intelligent, classy, athletic… Everything you’d ever want in a man. And a president. The show was very, very popular and quite influential. And viewers of the show loved David Palmer / Dennis Haysbert: According to Wikipedia, one poll named Palmer as respondents’ Favorite On-Screen President. In another one, people named him the TV President they would most like to see in the Oval Office. When Obama came along, people thought: “It’s Palmer!” And voted for him.
2. It made people feel good about themselves to vote for “the first black president.” It let them say (at least in their inner dialogue): “I am part of something VERY IMPORTANT — electing the first black president of the US!”
3. And of course, what Neo wrote: “Withdrawing permission to disagree.” By the time of the election, there was this sense that NOT voting for Obama was being “racist.” Even if you didn’t agree with ANYTHING he said or stood for, the implication was that if you didn’t want to vote for him, it was because he was black. If the first two didn’t sway voters, this did. This was used to browbeat fence sitters: “If you don’t vote for Obama, it’s because you might be racist”
4. Cheating. Not as massive as 2020, but in 2008 was when Democrats outside of Chicago tried various ways of cheating. They’d already realized you really didn’t have to do it on a statewide scale: just focus on a few districts in a heavily Democrat, highly populated county or two in a few states. But the cheating started during the primaries as well: I don’t recall the specifics (I’m not a Democrat and didn’t for that closely at the time) but I remember that there were some irregularities. This just helped make sure he didn’t lose. In case the first the things didn’t work.
I think the first thing had a huge impact on voters. I get pooh-poohed about it, but I think people get easily seduced by crap they see on TV.
Obama was not the sheriff of Rock Ridge!
Someone Else point 4 … not a Democrat, either, but as with Neo’s remarks on how Obama’s confederates worked over signatures on the nominating petitions of his rivals, he had operatives that knew how to work the caucus and other non-primary delegate selection procedures. 2008 was the also first Democrat national convention where a full 20% of delegates were the unpledged and unelected ‘super delegates’.
Re: Obama 2008
Someone+Else:
I love your mention of Dennis Haysbert, playing the black President Palmer on the TV thriller “24”.
“Being physically inside the White House, it turned out, was a mere detail of power; even more substantial power lay in controlling the digital switchboard that Obama had built, and which it turned out he still controlled”
Something a wise executive said to me once, which has stayed with me:
“When you’re running a large organization, you’re not seeing reality. It’s like you’re watching a movie where you only get to see maybe one out of a thousand frames, and from that you have to figure out what’s going on.”
If this is true of running large organizations–and to a considerable extent, it is–then it is even more true of the citizen in a large and complex country. Few people can have direct personal information about what is going on with a situation such as Gaza, or the effectiveness and safety of a vaccine. They have to rely on sources–they watch a movie, using the above metaphor, and all they can see is selected frames. So the people who choose what frames are seen, and in what sequence, have enormous power.
The media is part of the feedback system of a society, and to the extent that that feedback is suppressed or distorted, bad things are likely to happen. It is as if the thermostat for your HVAC system was sending a “it’s too cold” signal when it is really way too hot. Or, more vividly, as if the hydraulic elevator servos on an airliner were receiving feedback that the actual position of the elevator is 20 degrees UP when it is actually 20 degrees DOWN.
So the corruption of a society’s information channels is not likely to be survivable for very long.
It has often been asserted that the media acts as the agent of the Democratic Party…but it is also true that the Democratic Party is the agent of the media and academic class.
I like sports metaphors. No normal American boy thinks it’s a good idea to choose the members of his high school football team by ethnicity or grade point average. They all want the best football player possible at each position. They all know their win-loss record depends on that meritocracy.
Competitive sports teach about life.
To make America great again, we need to get back to the meritocracy and not be bamboozled by the “life isn’t fair” crowd that wants to give everyone a ribbon. It’s all a scam to take control of society. And that’s what Obama is all about.
Sennacharib: Obama was not the sheriff of Rock Ridge!
“The sheriff is near …”
All that other stuff helped but the number one reason Obama got elected in 2008 was the financial meltdown. After McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate he was actually leading Obama in the polls. But after the Treasury Secretary came out and said “We need 800 billion dollars or the economy is going off the cliff” it was game over. Sure McCain handled it ineptly but it didn’t matter. By the way it seems quaint now, doesn’t it, “only” $800 billion.
One conspiracy theory I can’t quite shake is that the meltdown was manipulated (Soros?) for this exact purpose, to get Obama elected.
In cases of military coups and other insurrections, the insurrectionists have traditionally been quick to occupy telephone and telegraph switching centers. It strikes me that the Democrats’ manipulation of Internet platforms is the present-day equivalent.
Insurrectionists have also been quick to take control of key transportation facilities. Today, the no-fly list provides a partial equivalent.
Gentlemen we have to protect our phoney- baloney jobs, harrumph!
I’ve never seen the program mentioned by Someone+Else: “People had fallen in love with the President on “24,” David Palmer played by Dennis Haysbert. He was the perfect president — well-spoken, even tempered, intelligent, classy, athletic… Everything you’d ever want in a man. And a president. The show was very, very popular and quite influential”…”When Obama came along, people thought: “It’s Palmer!” And voted for him”….but I do believe that fiction, especially in the form of movies & television, can have a major influence on how people think and act in the real world.
When Goethe’s ‘Sorrows of Young Werther” came out, it apparently inspired a wave of suicides by disappointed lovers.
It seems that Werther was even *banned* in some places due to the wave of suicides that it had inspired:
https://www.booksontrial.com/the-sorrows-of-young-werther-the-passages-that-inspired-suicide/
…interesting analogies to today’s concerns about social media.
Interesting that the effectiveness the author describes is more akin to possession. I would say demonic possession/influence. The author is quick to squash any supposition that supernatural forces are at work (or that there are supernatural forces).
He does that a couple of times during the piece. Is it because what he witnessed seemed supernatural or because the venue he wrote in can’t cotton the idea of a supernatural force?
Could it also be in the realm of an early mass formation/psychosis?
While I think we’re seeing the full blown spiritual war breaking out as the nation abandons its Christian roots, in full evidence by the debauchery of the Paris Olympics and the failed assassination attempts.
Since Marx was heavily influenced by the occult/demonic, the Marxist roots of Obama demonstrates to me which side of the spiritual battle Obama falls on.
Since Marx was heavily influenced by the occult/demonic
Really?
IrishOtter49,
In Jordan Peterson’s interview with Dr. Paul Kengor on Dr. Kengor’s book, “The Devil and Karl Marx” the two men discuss Marx’s fascination with the demonic:
https://youtu.be/LOFIHp6aTuE?si=qUGVBr9swDDfytE6
This may be what Brian E. is referring to.
I agree with what you are saying. That Tablet piece is not accurate at all. It seems to want to make some kind of grand statements about new-fangled innovative political strategies, but to me the piece reads like never-ending mumbo-jumbo that tries to sound smart but never says anything useful or accurate.
Christopher B – Obama’s great insight in 2008 was the realization that primaries had been almost completely nerfed by the relentless efforts of the Democrats to make them “fair” by imposing proportional representation. So you got almost as many delegates for losing as for winning, unlike in the older winner-take-all systems where if you won a district, you generally won all of the delegates in that district. I remember in 1976 Reagan won the Indiana primary something like 51-49 but he won the delegates in every district but one, winding up with something like 45 of 54 delegates.
So Obama, having figured this out, focused his efforts almost entirely on the caucus states, and wound up winning a disproportionate number of their delegates, the more so that the Hillary supporters were much less energetic in coalition-building in the early rounds of delegate selection, so they wound up marginalized early on. Of course this was also part and parcel of the lethargic campaign Hillary ran since she’d been told for four years it was “her turn” and expected a coronation rather than a competitive contest.
Virtue signaling white people will be the death of this country. Obama hung out with one of the worst of the worst Weather Underground radicals and spent 20 odd years in Jeremiah Wright’s Jew-hater church. There’s no covering those stains. If you still voted for Obama with knowledge of just those two things, your judgment is at best questionable.
well its correct in broad strokes, but in not some of the details, Samuels is usually not that sloppy in these matters,
there was a perfect storm, that underlay the rise of obama, 2008 was really the year the journolist, had really taken form, we didn’t know who they were until that 2010 profile, it was also the year that social media platform, had actively taken over, McCain was a reluctant candidate,
having fought vociferously against Guiliani, and somewhat less so, Romney, (I voted for Guiliani fwiw) the former was saddled with some of the worst staff until
Jeb ran in 2016, he then went possum in the aftermath, I think Wallace and Schmidt had decided to throw the match at some point, they had the assistance of Halperin and co
in this endeavour among others
the crows had come to roost, with the Subprime crisis, but the detonation of Lehman bros, was the catalyst, and it’s timing was way too fortuitous to be accidental
the expedition in Iraq, was perhaps in recovery around that time, the speed that the Islamic State built up its cadres suggests maybe not,
One of the things about Obama and his administration is that the whole thing is an example of what I term “gamification”.
What they did to get him into office was to “finesse” their candidate and “work the system”. They weren’t running against the issues or the other candidates, they were running against the rules, more than anything. As such, they “gamed the system” and won.
You run into this a lot, if you look at it. Successful people are often guilty of this technique, working the system to get ahead. The problems come in once the situation they’re in departs the “rule envelope” and they have to interact and cope with the real world. At that point, “gamifiers” very often fail miserably, because they never confronted reality or contended against it… They get used to “playing the rules”, and that makes them weaker at actually accomplishing anything out in the chaos of objective reality.
You run into this problem a lot when you examine academia; the structure of the academic world is basically a training simulation; when the people leaving the simulation do well, you can say that there’s reasonably good fidelity to reality with your simulation. If they fail miserably, because they gamified the whole thing, playing up to their professors and telling those authority figures what they want to hear, then you find that the “gamified” graduates of that institution really aren’t worth the effort to hire. They’re conditioned to figure out the rules of your organization, and then work their way to the top by gaming the hierarchy, not actually adding value or performing.
Obama and the vast majority of the people he brought into governance with him were and remain gamifiers; recall what Ben Rhodes said about Iran and how he “worked the system” to make the Obama “initiative” happen. No attention paid to actual effect, or objective reality; we’re just gonna game everything to get it through, and if it blows up? Not their problem.
This is the peril of dealing with gamifiers. They mistake the artificial rules they’re playing against for the actual reality of the world, and that will almost inevitably blow up in all of our faces, because no rule set actually manages to encompass reality.
Lesson from history? Pay attention to how Adolf Hitler got himself into power, and his early days as Germany’s leader: He was the ultimate gamer, playing against all the rules to get himself and his party into power in Germany. Once there, he started using the same techniques of gamesmanship in his diplomacy, thinking that if he played against the rules, he could win. That worked right up until it didn’t, and the Germans lost everything in the war.
Gamification is dangerous, especially with regards to political decision-making. There is a point past which the artificialities of “da rulez” no longer apply, and everyone ceases giving a rat’s ass that you’ve “won” by manipulating the rules.
Hitler expectantly thought that the British would surrender, after Dunkirk. He’d played to the rules, they had to capitulate. Didn’t happen, did it? There is a point where the rules get thrown out, and raw survival takes over.
I think the President Palmer form 24 comment is on to something. That could not be anticipated or planned, but it helped.
Re the virtue signal points — or penance/indulgence — in voting for ‘the first black President’ counts for a lot too. But only for the first term! It was utterly baffling that that kind of thinking still held some sway on the middle after the first term.
Again re Pres Palmer in 24, I think the MSM deliberately tried to help Hillary with the wish fulfillment Madam Secretary show on ABC? w Tea Leoni where her role is clearly amped up to be more presidential than the president.
Kirk makes an excellent comment about gamification.
I would add re
“Gamification is dangerous, especially with regards to political decision-making. There is a point past which the artificialities of “da rulez” no longer apply, and everyone ceases giving a rat’s ass that you’ve “won” by manipulating the rules.”
This very much applies to the US/NATO fanning the flames in Ukraine with predictably provocative expansion (see Kennan and Kissinger) while claiming ‘defensive’ alliance** — and the expectation that Russia will indefinitely abide by the niceties that we are supposedly technically not at war with them, while US advanced weapons, ‘trainers’ and intel hit targets deeper inside Russia.
**How did the Ukraine dalliance helper either the safety and welfare of the Ukrainian people it supposedly was helping, or increase regional stability and support the security of the actual alliance members?
I read the article and liked it but remained agnostic on some elements. I like your comment too and it leaves me with fewer questions. In any event it is past time to begin wrestling with these issues.
Morgan Freeman!!!
President twice, at least. God, at least once.
Chief Justice, VP, professor, House speaker, doctor, detective, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, Nelson Mandela — NARRATOR!!!!
Obama copied his movements and gestures.
He and Denzel cleared out a lot of rotten wood.
@NSC,
One of the issues you’re constantly going to run into with the people who game the system is that while they’re amazingly good at sussing out the rules of the game, and then working within those rules to suborn the game, the issue with that is that they are necessarily operating at a remove from reality. How far they’re off from that is dependent upon how good simulation they’re working within is maintaining fidelity with what the actual conditions of the real world are.
Most leftoid academics (Obama is one) live inside their own heads. They propose; their own minds dispose. Reality never enters; in their minds, their perfect confections of satisfying outcomes always eventuate, and then if they don’t actually come about in the outer world of reality? Why, then… It must be the fault of the wreckers!!! Their ideas are perfect; their unflawed understandings are always unquestionable, never to be examined or assessed as to whether or not they work.
For the Obama-like, the fact that their plots and programs don’t actually produce the predicted and planned results is something they can never comprehend; those failures are invisible, and if the harsh light of reality is forced on them, then they’ll blame someone else, for deliberately acting to destroy their ideas.
These people make up their minds once, and then never have another thought about whatever it was. They can’t; it’s all internal, with total disregard to anything outside their heads.
For an Obama-ite, the failures of Obamacare and all his other initiatives don’t exist; they see criticism and anyone pointing out the failures as strictly ideological phenomenon, not the imposition of reality.
Creatures of the mind, they’re forever locked into a desperate fantasy world where their ideas reign unquestioned, adamantine and perfect. It’s a sad thing, when reality ensues… As it inevitably must.
This is why the idjits who proceeded along Gramsci’s planned takeover are such fools; they think the institutions that they captured are the source of things like “trust in the media”. If only they can control the New York Times, they think, they can control the narrative and everything downstream of that.
The issue, there? The New York Times fills a function, and that function is “Provide trustworthy news to the public”. If by capturing that institution they render it untrustworthy, which is what they’ve done…? Then, buh-bye to the influence they thought they’d have. The public will rightly observe the ideological bias, and then cease “trusting” the New York Times, rendering that “capture” effectively meaningless.
That’s the point that Gramsci missed; he was, like most leftoids, a magical thinker: He truly believed that the things which flowed from institutions like the New York Times were inherent qualities, not the result of what those institutions did. His idea was “Seize the institution, use it to enact our programs…”, but the problem is that once they started in on that, the institution immediately lost the value they thought they’d seized control over. Same with academia; you’re seeing the result, today, as more and more people eschew the academic course and don’t bother going to college. Eventually, they’ll have so devalued the diplomas that they offer that they’ll be effectively useless, and nobody will bother with obtaining them.
No value? Nobody is going to pay attention to the institution, any more. Once a critical mass in the public mindset is reached, it’s all over for them.
The leftoid model of the world is highly flawed; they’ve mistaken the smoke for the fire. Because of that, they’re going to do what such idealistic idjits always do: Crash and burn.
Trick is, to keep them from taking the rest of civilization down with their stupidity.
…However, they may not “crash and burn” if they succeed in achieving TOTAL POWER (or close to it) within the system they are “gaming”.
Even though they will likely, as indicated, eventually destroy that system.
But what if that destruction is precisely the goal?
And, the corollary: what if they believe that THEY will survive it?
In which case their “stupidity” lies in believing they will still be able to benefit (or at least not be negatively affected) from any consequences of such destruction.
Or does it? …As one looks at the current global elites and experts, cf. Klaus Schwab, et al., and their goals and expectations…
(Might this be termed the Revolutionary’s paradox?)
Put another way, the only thing that has thus far preserved the USA is its Constitution. (Which is why the Democrats so despise it.)
@Barry Meislin,
What we’re witnessing is a real-life iteration of the South Park “Underpants Gnome Business Plan”.
First time I saw that bit of social commentary, I was struck by just how much in the world around me resonated with that whole cartoon episode concept. I mean, it was viciously satirical social commentary, if you applied it to most of the leftoid program.
I mean, literally… Most of their stuff, whether it’s the homeless programs, or their idiotic ideas about the justice system and criminals? You’re left sitting there once they’re finished expounding on their ideas, and you have to ask “Uh… And… Then what?”
Which they can never answer. They’re also incapable of making the observations and the follow-on adjustments that they’d need to make if they were really halfway competent and intelligent.
You can always identify them by the fact that they never, ever cease doubling-down on failing propositions. Crime is up? Release more criminals! It’s not their fault; they’re downtrodden! Be more understanding, caring… Surely they’ll respond to our good intentions!!!
Pragmatism is an obscenity to the leftoid. They’re incapable of observing and learning from those observations.
Outstanding comments today!
They may be cartoonish, ridiculous and absurd.
But these “clowns”, “comedians” and “jokers” are deadly serious.
ROTFL at them, no matter how satisfying, can only go so far.
Trump and his people must quickly find a way to tighten up election rules NATIONWIDE…along with the entire panoply of problems and crises that “Biden” has gifted them (and the country).
One of the reasons why Trump won in ’16 is because two Republican candidates in a row had appeared to take a dive and throw their elections. If one candidate had gone fruit loopy and disappeared at a critical juncture, happenstance; if two had done it at different times in history, coincidence; but twice consecutively, against the same candidate even, looked an awful lot like controlled opposition. So, the evidence logically failed to disconfirm the Bifactional Uniparty hypothesis, and swing voters were so pissed that I personally know of two — one who favored Bernie and one who favored Trump — who agreed early on to both vote for whichever got nominated, if only one of them did. Trump did and Sanders didn’t, and the rest is history.
I mention this to cut through the fuzz; you don’t have to be certain that collusion happened to allow that it was fishy enough to swing sentiment against the Establishment of both parties. They at minimum failed to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and it hardly matters whether it was wrongdoing or incompetence that earned the voters’ contempt; either way, McCain and Romney behaved so suspiciously that it affected future elections, smoothing Trump’s path to victory as the anti-Establishment candidate, so it has earned serious consideration as a factor in Obama’s own wins.
The idea that the “establishment Republicans” have been cooperating with the Democrats to run a national-level “controlled opposition” is out there; you just need to open your eyes and see it.
McCain ran on “repeal Obamacare” in 2016. When returned to office in that election, what did he do? Well, you remember, he didn’t vote for the repeal of Obamacare, did he?
What did any of the Republicans in Congress do, with that victory that Trump earned for them in 2016? Was there legislation ready to go? Or, did they piss away the opportunity presented, and go on to lose the 2018 mid-terms?
Anyone who thinks we aren’t being played by the coterie of incompetents and wastrels in DC is a purblind fool. Everything that’s happened over the last fifty years in that city could best be understood as a Mafia-style “Bust-Out” operation, conducted by organized crime. It’s hardly accidental that Nancy Pelosi’s family connections trace back to the Baltimore mob, either.
Follow the money: Start with the proposition that all these “initiatives” like Solyndra are criminal conspiracies from the get-go. Where did the cash wind up? Same with the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act”, and everything else done under the masthead of Captain Senile, Joe Biden.
I would very much like to see someone investigate how it is that an obviously senile man, who cannot be prosecuted for his felony-level security violations by the Federal prosecutors that looked into the affair because they feel he’s too far gone into senility… How the hell is it that his signature is still acceptable on a pardon? Who’s actually doing the approvals, here?
I say there ought to be a little look-see into the whole affair, a determination made as to when he slipped the surly bounds of competency, and then prosecutions galore for whoever was using him as a figurehead. Every signature coming out of the Biden White House ought to be invalidated, or the Presidential office becomes meaningless.
The President is either the responsible party, or he isn’t. There are no provisions in the Constitution for an Executive branch run by a committee, and that principle needs to be re-established NOW. The people who frauded him into office and who used him as a figurehead need to be identified and dealt with.
I don’t think people understand what has been going on in this country.
I have long been sure that 24 allowed most Americans to think of a white action guy working for a competent black guy. Because of competence. Could have been Collin Powell, or possibly Condoleezza Rice (tho not without a husband). Whites, forever guilty of yet sadly mostly ignorant of slavery in history, are desperate to avoid being called racist.
Cancel culture is a good phrase to describe that elites don’t have permission to speak the truth, when those truths are not politically correct. Like lower avg IQs for the avg Black, and the f@ct that men and women are both physically and psychologically different.
Cancel culture is not dead yet, in fact we’ve only ended the beginning of cancel culture. Going forward there will advances against it and for more of it. Then, hopefully, we will be ending it in most places while there are few or no places where it is expanding.
Trump winning, tho still quite close with 75 million Harris votes, means all possible reasons for problems can be discussed. But most Dem voters aren’t going to be voting Rep in the next election. Sadly.