Okay I'll let you off the hook on important topics like new born baby rights, what do you all think of the Comey / Trump feud? I avoided watching last nights interview...
I figured there was little that could be said to make me think less of Trump's morals or character.... I mean the guy cheats on his wife, grabs the pussies of unwilling women, files for bankruptcy and lies constantly... Where is the news? And of course he proves that when he goes from praising Comey for the Clinton pre-election letter, to supposedly firing him for it doing just a few months later.
Thoughts?
CNN Trump Faces Comey's Moral Assault
FOX News Comey Media Blitz
VOX Comey Not The Hero
I figured there was little that could be said to make me think less of Trump's morals or character.... I mean the guy cheats on his wife, grabs the pussies of unwilling women, files for bankruptcy and lies constantly... Where is the news? And of course he proves that when he goes from praising Comey for the Clinton pre-election letter, to supposedly firing him for it doing just a few months later.
Thoughts?
CNN Trump Faces Comey's Moral Assault
FOX News Comey Media Blitz
VOX Comey Not The Hero
17 comments:
As some commentator pointed out, it's a mistake or at least a tactical challenge, to get in a mud fight with a pig. As even his most fervent admirers know, if not concede, Mr. Trump is not a man of character and/or integrity. Comey who fancies himself as somebody possessed of both of those qualities, can only demean himself by engaging with Trump on some sort of equal terms.
I have been amused at how hard Fox News is working to cast Comey as a straw man. He is now, we are told, a hero of the left. And by the logic of guilt by association so dear to America's right wing, by tearing him down, they are tearing down the people they link him with and by some weird logic, the credibility of what he has to say. In the world of right wing thinking, if you don't like a guy, you have disproved whatever it is, he has to say.
--Hiram
I feel for Comey, he has been trying to walk a moderate path between the 2 tribes, and I know the labels and claims applied to someone like that... :-)
Remember the war cry of both tribes...
"You are either with us, or against us !!!"
The VOX article I linked to above did a good job of showing that.
I think I am fine with Comey wrestling with this pig, just as I am with Stormy doing her thing.
Somebody has to call Trump out for his lying, cheating, self serving, etc and sure is not going to be the GOP politicians or his true believers.
I just hope the Liberals stop attacking Comey for past differences of opinion, and start focusing the "abuse of power" issues he is raising today.
Comey is a guy who can't come up with the right answers because he is asking himself all the wrong questions. He couldn't find a right way to intervene in the election of 2016 because he shouldn't have intervened at all. He is someone who lost the ability if he ever had it, to distinguish between righteousness and self righteousness.
As a relativist, my war cry is that if you aren't with us now, you might be with us at some later point. As a liberal working in an environment where it requires not just a majority to get things done, but a consensus, making enemies needlessly is just foolish.
I don't know that we are attacking Comey. It's my sense that it's conservatives who are defining him as an albatross, one they are working hard to hang around our necks. But what I have also noticed, is that as much as Comey's credibility is under attack, nobody seems to be questioning the truth of what he says. That's the way we argue in a civilization that is in decline.
--Hiram
I of course disagree... I think Comey had a duty to ensure the voters and Congress were up to date regarding an active investigation regarding one of the Presidential candidates. Just as he had a duty to investigate the sitting President and his cronies.
Unfortunately talking truth to power and/or tribes does not win one many friends.
"I think Comey had a duty to ensure the voters and Congress were up to date regarding an active investigation regarding one of the Presidential candidates"
But he only did that for one candidate -- he neglected to tell the American people that Trump campaign associates were being investigated for possible collusion with the Russians.
Listen, I think Comey's recounting of events is useful for looking at the behavior of Trump as it relates to obstruction of justice and abuse of power should we reach that point under a Democratic Congress. His explanations of how he handled the Clinton case are a bunch of inconsistent argle-bargle that shows he was more worried about his own perception than doing the right thing.
I think Comey had a duty to ensure the voters and Congress were up to date regarding an active investigation regarding one of the Presidential candidates
Comey had no such duties. His duty was to investigate crime. That Comey somehow lost track of that is what led to such a disastrous series of unintended consequences, which have made him a cautionary tale today.
Comey is an articulate guy, more novelist than policeman. His perspective is an interesting and entertaining one, but he isn't telling us anything we didn't already know. It's his frankness that makes him such a novelty. Ordinarily people in positions like his don't tell us what they really think. Our president is a hoodlum. It's just that not that many people are willing to say so on television.
--Hiram
Greg Sargent's column today lays out the case for the argument being made here very clearly:
WP: Comey’s remarkable new admission helps explain how Trump won
I think Greg got this much correct...
"It is true that Clinton lost for all kinds of other reasons, including her own role in emailgate, her flaws as a candidate, multiple strategic failures by the campaign and various unhealthy tendencies in the Democratic Party."
Not to mention that she called a lot of rural folks like my friends irredeemable deplorables... I am pretty certain that anything Comey said was immaterial in comparison to that. I mean look at this map... Piss off large swaths of the country at your own peril.
Except the Clinton lead in the polls, which had been solid for a little over a month, began to drop after the Comey October letter. The national and swing state polls shifted by about three points in the week following the Comey letter, and Clinton lost by less than one point in WI, PA, and FL. (Pre-Comey letter polls showed Clinton with leads in WI and PA, and FL was a toss-up.)
So, yes, there were lots of reasons the race was close enough that the Comey letter could tip it, but it's also true that Comey's one-sided disclosures also had a very real impact.
538: The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election
I think the point in the Sargent column about how Comey only buckled to political pressure from one side of the aisle is instructive as well.
Do you really think Trump voters would have been dissuaded by some vague investigation announcement by the swamp?
The only way I think it could have impacted the election was if it finally depressed DEM voters to the point that they stayed home.
I like Nate's recommendation best.
"If I were advising a future candidate on what to learn from 2016, I’d tell him or her to mostly forget about the Comey letter and focus on the factors that were within the control of Clinton and Trump. That’s not my purpose here. Instead, it’s to get at the truth — to figure out the real story of the election. The real story is that the Comey letter had a fairly large and measurable impact, probably enough to cost Clinton the election. It wasn’t the only thing that mattered, and it might not have been the most important. But the media is still largely in denial about how much of an effect it had."
Maybe he is just upset because the polls were wrong... :-(
Let's bear in mind that Hillary won the popular vote by a fairly substantial margin. It took a highly unlikely series of events for her to lose in the electoral college. No one can ever know for certain whether Comey's intervention threw the race to Trump, but it is reasonable to believe that it did.
The basic problem in 2016 is that we chose the wrong candidate, an answer that begs the question of who would have been the right candidate. Much as we try to learn from our mistakes, the mistakes we made in 2016 won't be available to us to make again in 2020. Unfortunately, a whole new set of mistakes will be on hand for us to make two years from now.
--Hiram
Or we could say...
"No one can ever know for certain whether Comey's intervention threw the race to Trump, but it is reasonable to believe that it did not. :-)
"Do you really think Trump voters would have been dissuaded by some vague investigation announcement by the swamp?
The only way I think it could have impacted the election was if it finally depressed DEM voters to the point that they stayed home."
Either way, it still had an impact.
I think the FBI director should not do things the result of which it is reasonable to believe would affect presidential races. And what happened in 2016 clearly show why. Comey made one mistake after another, each one seeming to set up and compel the next. It was the result of his fundamental departure from a nonpolitical role. And the results were disastrous, putting the republic itself at risk.
The key to Republican success in elections is to depress Democratic turnout. That's why they favor voter suppression measures such as voter ID. It's why we have more general and broad based get out the vote campaigns than Republicans. In 2016, this was a problem for Hillary. She simply was not as popular with potential Democratic voters as Barack Obama. She didn't have his intensity of support.
--Hiram
Sean,
If that helps you sleep at night.
Hiram,
I am sure it sure does not help the DEMs that many of the people they try to bribe are not model citizens in the first place...
If you can't hold a job, vote for us !!!
If you are unable to maintain long term serious relationships, vote for us !!!
If you are confused regarding your sexuality, vote for us!!!
If you are to foolish or irresponsible to use birth control correctly, vote for us!!!
If you recently ran across the border, try to vote for us !!!
:-)
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