Tomasky says something that isn't quite right!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2017

The history of our tribe:
If memory serves, we met Michael Tomasky just once, years ago.

We're strongly inclined to like Tomasky. For reasons we can't quite define, Tomasky's our kind of guy.

In a new piece at the Daily Beast, Tomasky argues against a certain type of liberal purity as Democrats start casting about for their next White House contender. On balance, we agree with the views he expresses, though it's hardly bearable to see this topic being raised at this early point.

We will complain about one minor point. Along the way, Tomasky says what's shown below.

As he does, he "bring[s] the eternal note of sadness in," if we might borrow from Arnold. We refer to the consummate, world-class cluelessness of our own self-impressed liberal tribe over the past many years:
TOMASKY (8/8/17): Someone, probably David Sirota, will respond to this column by saying we don’t need any lectures on electability from Tomasky, who assured us Hillary would win. And it would be a fair point. I was sure she would win. I and everybody else in America except Allan Lichtman, but still; I was wrong.

So I’m going to try to refrain, for the next three years and three months (!), from giving electability lectures...
Was everyone but Lichtman sure that Candidate Clinton would win?

Actually, no, they weren't! To cite one example, we weren't sure that Candidate Clinton would win, a point we made again and again at this award-winning site.

Indeed, it seemed fairly obvious that Candidate Clinton could lose. If memory serves, we made this point in an award-winning radio chat with our old friend, KGO's award-winning Chip Franklin, in the week before the election.

Was everyone sure that Clinton would win? Over Here, in our tribe's liberal tents, pretty much everyone was! After all, Professor Wang had given his assurance! What more could you ask?

In this way, we liberals showcased the stunning passivity and world-class dumbness which have been our calling cards for the past thirty years. Our history during that time is one of total haplessness:

We sat out the various wars against President Clinton, then sat out the twenty-month War Against Candidate Gore.

We sat around and stared into air as twenty-five years of gong-show attacks were directed at Hillary Clinton:

Remember when Gennifer Flowers told Rachel's favorite pundit, Chris Matthews, about Evita's many murders? (That's the sort of name Chris called her year after year after year.)

Remember how Rachel ran and hid as the myths about Benghazi were being invented? When James B. Comey—Comey the God—launched his first attack? When the New York Times ran its giant, gong-show pseudo-report about the scary uranium deal?

We remember all those tribal silences. They explain how You Know Who won.

Presumably, much of this can be explained by the desire of our leading liberal "journalists" to maintain faith with the increasingly conservative corporate owners who increasingly ruled their careers. But our spectacular tribal dumbness, and our steadfast refusal to fight, have been our defining tribal traits for a good many years.

We carried our insouciance and cluelessness into the last election. This morning, up jumps Tomasky, saying it wasn't just him!

In truth, it wasn't just him, but some others could see. One of the things a few people could see was the manifest intellectual helplessness of us Over Here in our tribe.

We're very, very, very slow and we're preternaturally dumb. Unless you hear the story from Us, in which case the dumbness can only be found among the vile folk Over There!

We're very dumb, and we're quite self-impressed. How do you think Trump got there?

For extra credit only: How horrible would the discourse be if Candidate Clinton had actually won?

Discuss for ten seconds, then nap. It's part of tribal culture!

37 comments:

  1. I don't know if sadness is the order of the day here but certainly it is impossible to escape the fact ad hominem hurts or helps Bob Somerby more than rancor.

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    1. Could it actually be Bob who writes these. I think maybe yes. The "more in sadness" thing was his.

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  2. When Somerby says we sat out the attacks, he is referring to himself. I didn't and neither did many of my liberal friends. We defended Gore and Kerry and Hillary.

    There is no distiction in predicting Trump could win. It took a combination of unusual, illegal circumstances to put Trump in office. Any two-bit dictator can win a rigged election. Would Somerby brag that he predicted Putin would win? Our problem was that we didn't know about the conspiracy to keep Hillary out of office.

    Somerby acts like he did something clever by predicting a highly unlikely outcome that would not have hapened without tampering. This claim is offensive.

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    1. Sadly, Bob was too busy attacking Maddow to defend Clinton.

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    2. At 4:03

      When Somerby say "we," he's referring to the mainstream, supposedly liberal media - like Maddow. In terms of national broadcast news, she's nominally part of "our tribe." Unbelievably, so was Chris Matthews at some point in time, as Bob has documented.

      National broadcasts shape the thinking of the national audience. When Bob talks about "staring into space," don't feel like he's talking about you directly, or many of the other millions of concerned lefties. His focus is media criticism, always has been. He wants our side to win, but seems to despair at our some of our msm "journalists," especially those deemed important in the fight.

      Cheers,
      Leroy

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    3. At 4:06

      He defended her (though tangentially), in this very post!

      Leroy

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    4. Glad that Bob-Whisperer Leroy checks in to tell use what Bob means, wants, and is thinking.

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    5. Leroy,
      Can you explain why Bob thinks the mainstream media would allow liberals near their mass media?
      The problem isn't the talking heads, it's the people who hire them.

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    6. Leroy,

      When Bob says we he is lying by pretending to be a liberal, when he really a conservative.

      Delete
    7. anon 9:04

      Touché. I couldn’t agree more, and Bob has made this observation himself about the owners of our national news shows.

      I suppose the question then becomes, who presumably represents the political left on national news? I would agree with you if you think nobody really does. So would Bob. (I used to be able to get Democracy Now! On cable, but no longer).

      But some (like Maddow) are given the label of leftist, even if not directly. It’s clear that people like her are paid to create spectacle out of the political scene. In that sense, she is no different than Hannity, in that she leans towards one side of our elected duopoly in doing so, and as a result is immediately compromised.

      I would think that someone like Maddow, raking in the enormous sums that she does, would have some clout in deciding the direction her show should take. But you’re making me think I would be wrong. Matter of fact, I could be wrong about everything I think I know.

      Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

      Leroy

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    8. Bob thought Trump MIGHT win, not that he would. I thought this terrible event MIGHT happen, and Tomasky probably did too. Unquestionably, terrible things were allowed to go by because there were so many of them and this hell we are now in seemed unthinkable. While many of the points Bob makes about the Press are real and important, what makes Bob ultimately a tiresome prick is the unmistakable sense he was HOPING Trump would win out of sheer twisted bitterness. Just so he could blame it all on those liberal meanies. But the trailers, creeps, and idiots who voted for Donald Trump are responsible for him being President. No one else.

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  3. Wow, you can't help but attach Maddow even when discussing something that happened when she was still in High School. Well you're in good company, Pat Robertson attacked her last night. Bob and Pat, two old white conservative men who can't handle the success of an intelligent women.

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  4. It was obvious to me, right from the beginning, that not a single person in the whole country would come out and spend 30 minutes of their time and half-gallon of gas to vote for Clinton.

    And it's got nothing whatsoever to do with Benghazi.

    It's about your 'tribe' being a bunch of devoted neoliberal globalists, banksters' minions, identity-politics peddlers, and imperial war-mongers (so yes, it does something to do with Libya, though not with the silly Benghazi episode).

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    1. What color is the sky in your world?

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    2. "not a single person in the whole country would come out and spend 30 minutes of their time and half-gallon of gas to vote for Clinton." Er, I beg your pardon, 65.8 million people did, dumbass. That's 3 million more than the maniac who won the electoral college.

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    3. They didn't vote for Clinton, anon. Some voted because they always vote for the fake 'D' team. Some voted because the TV told them that a vote for Mr Trump is a vote for Hitler. But not a single person voted specifically for Clinton

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    4. Don't be an idiot. I voted specifically for Clinton. I admire her and believe she would have been a wonderful president. I know many people who feel the same way. But why am I disputing a f**king troll? Why are you even here?

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    5. Here's an analysis using Mao's fact-based, utterly logical method:
      Everyone who voted for Trump was really voting AGAINST Hillary.
      Here's another: Everyone who voted for Trump was a deplorable racist.
      Your statement is exactly what Bob Somerby rails against...reading the minds of 66 million people.
      Believe me, you have no ability in that department.
      You come here every day and learn nothing.
      By the way, Trump isn't smart enough to be Hitler.
      And Hitler actually got more votes than his opponents...so there's that.

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    6. Many people voted for Trump; he did, and still does have enthusiastic supporters.

      Bot no one voted for Clinton. No one went to her 'rallies', at least not voluntarily. No one wanted her to be on the ballot. And the anon who said s/he admires her is obviously a paid troll, or a bot. Admiring Clinton is inconsistent with being human.

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    7. I don't know what's more ridiculous: fake-Chinese troll pretending to be a legitimate commenter or legitimate commenters responding to Fake-Chinese troll as if he/she/it is a legitimate commenter.

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    8. Jeez, haven't you guys ever heard about not feeding the trolls? This person should be given as much attention as the sad person who posts slabs of text about how her doctor gave her a love potion that saved her marriage.

      I guess this person could be helpful if you've got some vitriol to vent. Me... I just scroll right on by. No time to waste on that.

      Cheers,
      Leroy

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    9. In the defense of the Republican Congress, they didn't know people would die at Benghazi because they reduced security funding at America's overseas output. They only did so to tie the hands of the Democratic President so he couldn't help the citizens of the United States during the greatest recession the nation had seen in 7 decades. You know, typical right-wing party before country stuff.

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    10. @anon: "They only did so to tie the hands of the Democratic President so he couldn't help the citizens of the United States"

      Thanks for the laughs, anon. Nice. But it sounds like you might be confusing the bullshitter in chief with Santa Claus... He's the one who brings presents to children like you...

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    11. Yeah, I forgot to put 'paranoid mccarthyists' to the list; thanks Raven.

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    12. "Thanks for the laughs, anon. Nice. But it sounds like you might be confusing the bullshitter in chief with Santa Claus... He's the one who brings presents to children like you..."

      Of course those coal jobs aren't coming back. The joke's on whitey, and whitey still hasn't figured it out.
      Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are white, but they seem to be suckers.

      Delete
    13. 貓城記: “McCarthyist” ? — Trump learned (among other things his smearing and "punch back ten times harder" philosophy) from Joe McCarthy's good buddy Roy Cohn, and has applied those teachings throughout his career to the present day; he's the chief McCarthyist by apostolic succession, and you're his chief supporter on site. So of course you accuse others with that label, it follows logically.

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    14. Anonymous 8/8 7:02pm: “fake-Chinese troll” — It may help to understand the situation... “Mao Cheng Ji”, or properly “Māo Chéng Jì” (貓城記), is not a Chinese name. It is the title of a satirical science-fiction novel by Chinese author Lao She. The translation is “Cat Country” [yes, the Chinese word for cat is mao].

      Delete
  5. How could anyone blame liberals? It's Fox New's fault.

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    1. Trump beats 16 sad sack Republicans, colluded with Russians, lied about it, tried to quash the investigation (ie obstruction of justice), failure to pass any legislation...how can anyone blame conservatives or Fox News? It's all the libs fault. Libs make Twumpy act like big giant asshole.

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  6. Thanks for sharing wonderful information of giving best information. Its more useful and more helpful. Great doing keep sharing.

    Dallas Network Support

    ReplyDelete
  7. There are two ways to defend someone:
    1. Deny or refute the allegations
    2. Attack the critics

    Democrats may not have done enough of #1, but they did plenty of #2.

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    1. You left out number 3: telling an obvious troll to buzz off.

      Delete
  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

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