Voting for President, for the wrong reasons?

[Queequeg]

Sheilbh, have you seriously considered coming to America to work as a journalist? Brits are over-represented here. You are really, really talented.

[Ed Anger]

Anything would be better than Piers Morgan and Martin 'flag code' Bashir.

[Sheilbh]

Cheers, but Andrew Sullivan's cornered the market for overwrought gay Anglo-Catholics

[Ed Anger]

Sullivan needs a boat trip back too.

[Razgovory]

Anything would be better than Piers Morgan and Martin 'flag code' Bashir.

Christ yes.  I honestly couldn't figure out who is the biggest jackass.  If Piers Morgan grilled Charles Manson in an interview, I'd sympathize with Charlie.

[CountDeMoney]

Cheers, but Andrew Sullivan's cornered the market for overwrought gay Anglo-Catholics

And there's nothing wrong with Martin Bashir.  He's a biracial angel. 

[Ed Anger]

Cheers, but Andrew Sullivan's cornered the market for overwrought gay Anglo-Catholics

And there's nothing wrong with Martin Bashir.  He's a biracial angel. 

Somebody is drinking the grape Kool Aid.

[CountDeMoney]

Somebody is drinking the grape Kool Aid.

That's goddamned right.

[MadImmortalMan]

Cheers, but Andrew Sullivan's cornered the market for overwrought gay Anglo-Catholics

And there's nothing wrong with Martin Bashir.  He's a biracial angel. 

He's genetically-engineered. 





...oh wait.

[Queequeg]

Cheers, but Andrew Sullivan's cornered the market for overwrought gay Anglo-Catholics

Somewhat ironically, I think your ideological attachments are almost 180% flipped,even if positions are similar.. He's also a bit more bourgeois or posh, by merit if not by birth.

[Berkut]

Ended up voting pretty much a straight Dem ticket.

Pretty pissed off that I had to choose between voting for the assholes who decided to refuse to govern over the guy who didn't have the competence to stop them from doing it.

Kind of ridiculous really that I decided to go with the choice of well meaning incompetence over successful maliciousness.

[crazy canuck]

Ended up voting pretty much a straight Dem ticket.

Pretty pissed off that I had to choose between voting for the assholes who decided to refuse to govern over the guy who didn't have the competence to stop them from doing it.

Kind of ridiculous really that I decided to go with the choice of well meaning incompetence over successful maliciousness.

At the end of the day the well meaning guy might get it right but the malicious guy will always get it wrong.

[CountDeMoney]

Ended up voting pretty much a straight Dem ticket.

Pretty pissed off that I had to choose between voting for the assholes who decided to refuse to govern over the guy who didn't have the competence to stop them from doing it.

Kind of ridiculous really that I decided to go with the choice of well meaning incompetence over successful maliciousness.

Whether or not you did the right thing is one thing;  but you did the moral thing.  You feel dirty now, but you'll feel better later. 

[Sheilbh]

Ended up voting pretty much a straight Dem ticket.

Pretty pissed off that I had to choose between voting for the assholes who decided to refuse to govern over the guy who didn't have the competence to stop them from doing it.

Kind of ridiculous really that I decided to go with the choice of well meaning incompetence over successful maliciousness.

How could one side force the other to govern?  What you're saying is basically that the Republicans haven't operated in good faith these last four years, and I agree, but I don't see how any super-competent President could change that?

There's that great (and entirely accurate) Mitch McConnell line 'we worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals, because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the 'bipartisan' tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there's a broad agreement that that's the way forward.'  So there's that and the 'one-term President' priority.  In the Senate (where Republicans filibustered the very first bill Obama proposed, which passed 77-20) you can more or less stop anything from happening, doubly so once you won the House.

What do you think a more competent Obama administration could have done to thwart that?

[frunk]

How could one side force the other to govern?  What you're saying is basically that the Republicans haven't operated in good faith these last four years, and I agree, but I don't see how any super-competent President could change that?

There's that great (and entirely accurate) Mitch McConnell line 'we worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals, because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the 'bipartisan' tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there's a broad agreement that that's the way forward.'  So there's that and the 'one-term President' priority.  In the Senate (where Republicans filibustered the very first bill Obama proposed, which passed 77-20) you can more or less stop anything from happening, doubly so once you won the House.

What do you think a more competent Obama administration could have done to thwart that?

I think he should have stared them down.  Particularly on the budget crap they pulled, where they rejected the bipartisan compromise that he made with Boehner.  At that point he had a deal with some Republicans, and if the rest of their base refuses to cooperate the mess that results would have been completely in the holdout's laps.  He showed he was willing to work with Congress, but that they weren't willing to work with him.  Instead they came up with the ridiculous delayed hand grenade that'll be giving us fits again during the next couple of months.