Delaware Dem's Latest Posts
Monday Open Thread [5.23.16]
![Monday Open Thread [5.23.16]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Inverse.Blue_.Open_.Thread-240x180.png "Monday Open Thread [5.23.16]")
Jonathan Chait on Why Democrats Have Popular Presidents and Republicans Don’t:
As the matchup between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton takes shape, it has begun to dawn on some conservatives that the Republican Party faces a distinct handicap: The Democrats will have two popular ex-presidents to campaign for them, and the GOP will have none. Bill Clinton is the party’s most effective surrogate for wife Hillary, writes Byron York in the conservative Washington Examiner: “Republicans haven’t had the same luck. The only two-term GOP president in the last generation, George W. Bush, has stayed mostly out of politics in the seven years since he left the White House.” Meanwhile, writing for The Wall Street Journal opinion page, Richard Benedetto grapples with President Obama’s value as a surrogate. “When Mr. Obama ran for office in 2008, a central part of his campaign strategy was to heap blame on George W. Bush,” writes Benedetto. “How has Mr. Obama dodged similar treatment?”
How indeed? The answer, I’d suggest, is something along the lines of by governing competently rather than presiding over a flaming wreck of a presidency. But this answer presumes a level of introspection into the success of the last two Democratic presidents, and the conspicuous failure of the one wedged between them, that is absent from both columns, and from conservative thought in general.
Sunday Open Thread [5.22.16]
![Sunday Open Thread [5.22.16]](http://delawareliberal.net//wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Divider.png "Sunday Open Thread [5.22.16]")
Democrats will miss him when he’s gone, and should appreciate her while she’s here, says Martin Longman:
I expected Democrats to begin expressing much higher approval numbers for Obama once they were forced to really think about Clinton or Sanders in the White House, but the trend is even stronger with independents who basically hate their choices in this election cycle:
Democrats have slowly looked at Obama more favorably since the beginning of 2015, but independents have begun to look at Obama much more favorably. After a sharp slide following his reelection, independents turned their opinions of Obama around at the beginning of 2014. Over the past year, that’s escalated. And since ratings from Democrats and Republicans are more stable, that shift by independents moves the needle a lot.
People don’t always realize that Obama’s approval numbers have been held down by the ambivalence of a lot of Democrats. The same is happening now to a much greater degree to Hillary Clinton. She won’t really have to do anything to see her negatives decline once the Democrats unite around her as the only chance of keeping Donald Trump away from the nuclear codes. If independents follow suit, which they will if they campaign is waged competently, she won’t be laboring under historically high negatives by the time people start voting.
As I said yesterday, Democrats want to fall in love with their candidates, while Republicans want to fall in line. You are seeing that now with all the Republicans falling in line behind Trump. And you will see Hillary’s numbers rise when Democrats unite. The story of the Summer is set: The Resurrection of Hillary.
The Weekly Addresses
In this week’s address, President Obama discussed one of the single most important steps to help grow middle-class wages – expanding the number of workers who are eligible for the overtime that they have earned.
In his weekly message, Governor Markell highlights Delaware’s commitment to ensuring students have the skills and education they need to thrive in the new economy.
Friday Open Thread [5.20.16]
![Friday Open Thread [5.20.16]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Trump-240x180.jpg "Friday Open Thread [5.20.16]")
Matt Taibbi asks if this is the end for Republicans: “If this isn’t the end for the Republican Party, it’ll be a shame. They dominated American political life for 50 years and were never anything but monsters. They bred in their voters the incredible attitude that Republicans were the only people within our borders who raised children, loved their country, died in battle or paid taxes. They even sullied the word ‘American’ by insisting they were the only real ones. They preferred Lubbock to Paris, and their idea of an intellectual was Newt Gingrich. Their leaders, from Ralph Reed to Bill Frist to Tom DeLay to Rick Santorum to Romney and Ryan, were an interminable assembly line of shrieking, witch-hunting celibates, all with the same haircut – the kind of people who thought Iran-Contra was nothing, but would grind the affairs of state to a halt over a blow job or Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.”
“A century ago, the small-town American was Gary Cooper: tough, silent, upright and confident. The modern Republican Party changed that person into a haranguing neurotic who couldn’t make it through a dinner without quizzing you about your politics. They destroyed the American character. No hell is hot enough for them. And when Trump came along, they rolled over like the weaklings they’ve always been, bowing more or less instantly to his parodic show of strength.”
Thursday Open Thread [5.19.16]
![Thursday Open Thread [5.19.16]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Gray.Open_.Thread-240x180.png "Thursday Open Thread [5.19.16]")
I encourage everyone, Berniacs and Clintonistas alike, to read this piece by The Slot titled “We called up Bernie fans Who Threatened Dem State Chair and Asked Them to Explain Themselves.” You all know me, know that I am fervently not a Bernie supporter, and you know that I have grown to despise some of the more vehement and younger Bernie supporter. And even I left reading that article feeling sympathy for them!!! Goddamnit. LOL.
The long and short of it is that the Bernie supporters who made death threats against various Democratic Party officials are just dumb, naive kids. This is their first election, and they feel like if Bernie doesn’t win it is the end of all things. I remember feeling that way once. They were frustrated and wanted to make a statement. They way they chose to make that statement was completely unacceptable, and some of them recognize that.
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