CSotD: Camplain Strategies
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I pondered whether this pair should be a juxtaposition or if I should simply start with one and then add the other in the course of the commentary, but couldn't settle on an order so here they are.
The GOP race has gone from scary to a level of bizarreness that no longer fascinates me.
I don't know what they're going to do, but with Rubio out and Kasich only in because he won't go home, I have to adopt the Anne Frank stance and "still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."
Though I started popping the corks when they nominated W, and that turned out to be a waste of champagne.
And lives.
So maybe what I'm saying is that I don't feel I have a lot of control over what the GOP does and must base my hope on the electorate, which is indeed such faint hope that the growing debacle on the Democratic side is beginning to depress me.
Look, every political campaign attracts overenthusiastic screwballs.
In the olden days, you kept them under wraps, putting them in the backroom to stuff envelopes or sending them out to hang posters or somehow making use of their energy without putting them in a place where people would see or hear them. Properly hidden away, they were invaluable foot soldiers.
But today, they're out there blathering all over Facebook and Twitter and wherever else, and, at the moment, creating the impression that there is a significant body of voters who would rather let Donald Trump appoint two or three Supreme Court justices than hold their noses while voting for anyone but their chosen BFF.
And you can laugh about them, but did you laugh at the imbeciles in 2008 who thought Obama was born in Kenya?
Their king is likely to be the GOP nominee, and how funny is that?
The media is doing very little to help, since they chase whatever seems most shiny and consider it a violation of their sacred neutrality not to dignify the most ridiculous positions with a "some say" and a "many believe" and a sound bite from anyone who is willing to provide "balance."
It's funny when a late-night host sends camera crews out to record the idiotic things people say, though you wonder how many intelligent comments they have to delete to come up with the string of silly things they broadcast.
It's not funny when network news organizations do the same thing.
All of this dubious reporting of undocumented "trends" would be a sideshow curiosity and an easily dismissable "they all do it," if there were any question as to which candidate said this:
I also hope that we all remember — and this is a message not just to our opponents, but to those who support me as well – that we will need to come together in a few months and unite this party, and this nation, because the right-wing Republicans we oppose must not be allowed to gain the presidency.
Or if, just as he stepped forward to denounce whatever "Bernie Bros" actually exist, she would also make the point that not everyone who disagrees with her is a misogynist.
It's not that difficult, after all: Not only is "We don't want that crap" pretty concise, but, as a response to sexism, it beats hell out of "Good grief, we’re getting offended by everything these days! People can’t say anything without offending somebody."
As things tighten up, Clinton is doubling down on her sense of inevitability by becoming pissy, as in her now viral exchange with a Greenpeace activist, which you can see here, along with that activist's explanation that she is not necessarily a Sanders supporter so much as a one-issue voter on her own.
That piece links to Greenpeace's more nuanced take on what constitutes "taking money," as opposed to the fact-checkers' apparent conclusion that only direct contributions count and that PACs are truly arms-length and irrelevant.
Agree or disagree, but a difference in how people classify campaign contributions does not mean one of them is "lying."
Nor does being pressed on a point by a political activist mean there is a vast left-wing conspiracy out there, too.
As Plante suggests, this finger-pointing and hair-splitting is beneath the dignity of the campaign, and, as Bell points out, if she can't take the mild pushback from Bernie, she's going to have one hell of a hard time getting past Trump.
On a lighter, more colorful note
Thank you, Hilary Price, for poking a hole in the latest gottahaveit gottadoit gottagotta.
If I were going to do it, I'd do it this way.
With an IPA instead of kombucha, please. IPA's are as trendy as I need to be.
I'll admit I haven't tried adult coloring books. When a large part of your job includes laying out pages, it seems like a bit of a busman's holiday.
I can only imagine, then, how little appeal it must have for cartoonists.
I was having some deep cleaning done at the dentist's last week, which meant she carefully went along and below the gumline with the high-tech wand, but then finished things off with hand tools on the major surfaces.
During a momentary swallow-and-reset break in that latter process, I asked, "Do you find this relaxing?" and to her puzzled look added, "I have a lot of friends who are cartoonists, and they have to really focus on their penciling, but a lot of them put on music and kind of relax to do their inking. Is it like that?"
She thought a moment and said that, in fact, yeah, it was a nice break from the microfine stuff she did most of the day.
Still, I doubt she keeps a stock of human skulls at home so she can kick back in the evening and scrape tartar off their teeth, and I'll bet not a lot of cartoonists rush home at night to unwind with a bit of adult coloring.
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