Winning The White House
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-05-15/winning-white-house
November’s presidential election may seem like its still very much up for grabs, but journalists and pundits are already making their picks and predictions — and they often rely on conventional wisdom. For example, "incumbents always lose if unemployment goes above 9 percent in the days before the election." But conventional wisdom only tells us part of the story. What candidates do and don’t do on the campaign trail, and whether they are the incumbent or challenger are also key factors. Join Diane for an examination of what it takes to win the White House, and what previous campaigns can tell us about the one we are watching unfold.
Guests
Samuel Popkin
professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego and author of "The Candidate: What it Takes to Win - and Hold - The White House"
Eleanor Clift
contributing editor for Newsweek/The Daily Beast and author of "Selecting a President" with Matthew Spieler
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"Winning The White House"
So far it seems to take a president with a poor performance record that is in total denial about the debt and deficit and seeks only to divide the country, and a candidate because of unfair main stream media bias who does not dare say anything clear about what he would do to remedy the problems at hand. The media fawns all over our hallo headed celebrity president and hammers the competition on issues and embellishes stories about teenage misdeeds from 47 years ago.
Whatever one's answer to that question, the salient question then is, "What do the traits needed to win the White House have to do with the traits needed to govern wisely and well?"
Of course, both sets of traits will probably vary with circumstance, for example the different Presidential strategies necessary to dealing with a coöperative Congress or an hostile.
It doesn't matter. Our Government doesn't matter in the least, and least of all the Presidency. The Senate, the House and the Supreme Court are all corporately owned. Our government does as it is told!
Anyone who believes that the elections this fall will matter, is delusional. Welcome to Corporate Feudalism.
Case in point as to why government and laws don't matter:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/14/seven-and-a-half-things-you-nee...
Look the other way, step along, nothing to see here!
It seems that very few individuals who seek the office of the White House actually have the best interests of the people at heart. Why else would anyone spend hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-free donations to obtain a position that only pays $400,000 a year?
“Anyone who wants to be a politician shouldn’t be allowed to be one."
-Robert Heinlein, Science fiction author
Oh my god! We couldn't have that! Something might actually get accomplished other than ideological bickering and outright gridlock.
Someone might actually do the will of the people.....
Don't ever utter those words again.
I am not a Republican, but I do believe Republicans denied the President his "honeymoon" because they have felt very unfairly beat up by the media for a number of years, and also feel that President Obama was given too easy a ride to Washington, D.C.
How can you leave Ron Paul out of this conversation? He has the largest following on the internet. He also has had the media working against him booth in 2008second and 2012. Ron Paul has changed the way campaigns are run.
If we had taken a hint from Walter Cronkite (He asked, "Besides those who appear to be running, who do you think might make a good president?") we might be looking beyond those who seek office through self-promotion.
I think Cronkite's question is one that should be asked and heard more often.
Our political system would work better if Electors to the President were serving national interests, rather than serving party interests.
We don't have to have a system so dominated by two establishment-oriented parties.
Any state legislature today could change the law so that Electors of that state would be chosen by random survey of the state's population: "Who do you trust as a good judge of character?". If we had been doing that about twenty years ago, I imagine that at lease a few Electors may have decided to take their responsibility seriously, in the face of the realization that most people did not particularly want either of the two largest party's nominee as president, and look for someone who the largest number of people might say is a good or great choice.
Equal sharing of natural wealth means a more stable, just and sustainable society: 'Boom and bust' AND 'Thrive and collapse' are systemic flaws that can and must be addressed
Ha, yet another main stream media spin on behind the scenes....
The truth is, our vote doesn't count.
The presidents are chosen way before election time and the American public are kept in the dark, fumbling around with this phony left vs. right paradigm....
The people are waking up, no thanks to MSM!
Nationalize the oil and the banks.
I believe that oil and both consumer and investment banking will be nationalized in the near future. The tipping point will come when even the 1% discover that it's not just a matter of ideology anymore. The rest of the world is nationalizing oil and finance. We can not compete on a global scale if we do not use the power of the federal government to counter the massive power of other governments. No matter how rich and powerful a few private individuals become, they can not compete with entire nations. The strategy of sending the military to take out foreign governments who dare to nationalize oil and other markets is not just immoral, it's an unsustainable strategy that doesn't work. It's more humane AND more efficient to stop spending massive amounts of borrowed money on being the world market police and just nationalize US markets that have to compete with the nationalized markets of other nations.
JD Phillips LCSW is the author of The Firewall Sedition, a novel in the tradition of the progressive writers of the 1930s. firewalleconomics.com
Rick Stevens wrote: "How can you leave Ron Paul out of this conversation? He has the largest following on the internet. He also has had the media working against him booth in 2008second and 2012. Ron Paul has changed the way campaigns are run."
Libertarianism is slowly taking over the political right. Ron Paul unfortunately is just not the right candidate to push forward the message of small non interventionist government at this time. But make no mistake his efforts have not gone unnoticed.
Teece: The procedural election will be over in November and the elite crooked wealthy class will continue to harvest the residual wealth and labor of the USA.
Obama has succeeded wildly as a gameshow host in the reality vein even if Dorkhead Romney wins the electronic voting machine jackpot. The Whitehouse: Oh maybe we should auction it off to pay the national debt and then lease it back from the new owners for 3 or 4 trillion a year. Maybe this is a lesson for us: When fictional debts can be arbitrarily imposed on the citizenry without their approval or comprehension it is no wonder the branches of government can be hired out to the highest bidder. People will realize soon enough that our government has lost legitimacy by dissolving the social contract. Maybe then we will treat those obsessed with debt using powerful psychotropic drugs and electro-shock. They need an intervention because they're addicted to sadism and are a menace to society. We have too many psychotic "debt collectors", running wild and out of control.
Why don't you people get a clue. Rev. Wright has nothing to do with nor had nothing to do with anything. It is white folks bs red herring. YET, we cannot speak of Mitt's church that denied black people humanity, preached we were not equal and never will be since we are dark. We should be the white man's slave even after death and you have the unmitigated gall to to speak of what Wright 'said'???? When you can show me hanging bodies, children blown up in a church, dead civil rights workers on Wright's side, then you can say something. Until then, put a sock in it. That is a non-issue made up by white bigots. Period. The Mormons taught, practiced and enforced their agenda from inception. Actions speak louder than words. Yet, as usual, white folks can do and say what they want but we have no voice they don't like. Religion has no place in any of this. Most right wing holier than thou people are bigots, racists, intolerant idiots. I am Christian and if it were not true, why did the sourthern baptists issue an apology for what was done to us?
Why don't you people get a clue. Rev. Wright has nothing to do with nor had nothing to do with anything. It is white folks bs red herring. YET, we cannot speak of Mitt's church that denied black people humanity, preached we were not equal and never will be since we are dark. We should be the white man's slave even after death and you have the unmitigated gall to to speak of what Wright 'said'???? When you can show me hanging bodies, children blown up in a church, dead civil rights workers on Wright's side, then you can say something. Until then, put a sock in it. That is a non-issue made up by white bigots. Period. The Mormons taught, practiced and enforced their agenda from inception. Actions speak louder than words. Yet, as usual, white folks can do and say what they want but we have no voice they don't like. Religion has no place in any of this. Most right wing holier than thou people are bigots, racists, intolerant idiots. I am Christian and if it were not true, why did the sourthern baptists issue an apology for what was done to us?
What's the point of getting re-elected if the minute you do you're a "lame duck" president?
Ditto to what Butch said live on the air. I don't listen to campaign ads at all. I don't watch cable news, either. I watch network news for local news only, not political news. I listen to discussion shows where both sides are treated with equal respect and I listen to the candidates themselves...sometimes, primarily in open forums. I find their speeches lacking in much except political rhetoric. I would support a ban on unlimited political contributions to 3rd party campaign groups, PACS, and candidates. I would support limited government funded campaigns, but I don't know how we get around the free-speech issue. I am 100% for free speech, especially speech that I don't agree with because it assures that my voice will always be heard even if I'm in the minority or considered radical at some point in the future. I don't understand how corporations could have possibly been classified as "people" by the SC.
The Florida 2000 election was sabotaged long before the Supreme Court was involved. Fox News addicts believe nothing inappropriate happened in Florida in 2000. Now preventing legitimate voters from voting has moved to many other states. The success in preventing legitimate voters from voting in Florida in 2000 emboldened Republicans. It will go on.
"I don't understand how corporations could have possibly been classified as "people" by the SC"
The answer is fairly simple, it's called money and conservatives (libertarians and republicans alike) love it. They simply can't get enough of it!
One liberal commentator (Eleanor Rodham Clifton) & one liberal professor who worked for the presidential campaigns of Clinton, & then later for Gore's. To balance things out, Rehm added such gems as "I think he may have given up too soon" regarding Al Gore dragging out the 2000 election for weeks, & "maybe he should have insisted on a recount." Nevermind that ALL recounts, including those by journalistic organizations (hardly favorable to Bush), showed that Bush won.
Anyone who does not think that our system is corrupt needs to read "Power Inc." by David Rothkopf. It is a history of corporations and outlines how since the founding of our nation how corporations have tried to usurp power from the government by gaining special status as persons. The corruption is amost complete with Citizens United. And look what party stands for Citizens United. Small government means big outsourced corporate power.
If I recall correctly, the late John Nance Garner, FDR's first vice president, described the vice-presidency as "not worth a bucket of warm spit". The presidency, then, might not be worth much more. But, a lot of people with large egos like to get themselves in the history books. On very rare occasions (but not in my lifetime), some of the presidents do a pretty good job.
What the job of getting elected usually requires is lots of money, the right-sounding name, the proper race (Obama was the exception), membership in the proper church (so far), and most important, the ability to convince (perhaps deceive) the people that you might have a slight idea as to what to do. The ability to tell the public exactly what they want to hear is a definite plus.
In our history we have had maybe a half-dozen good presidents, and the rest were worth about what Garner said the vice-presidency was worth.
tricityjdw wrote:
One liberal commentator (Eleanor Rodham Clifton) & one liberal professor who worked for the presidential campaigns of Clinton, & then later for Gore's. To balance things out, Rehm added such gems as "I think he may have given up too soon"
Actual quote from transcript:
Rehm
...there are a lot of folks who do believe that Al Gore gave up much too quickly, that he should have had the whole state of Florida recounted. You know, she may have a good point.
Come on tricity, if you are going to put words in peoples mouths, can't you at least use their own words. This isn't Rush Limbaugh's Liar's Hour
OK. I shouldn't have put it in quotes. I would have quoted her exactly if the transcript had been online at the time, but it wasn't posted until 4 hours later.
The essence of what I attributed to her was correct. She used the same gutless technique that many journalists use when they say things like "it is said" or "experts say"--unattributed to anyone specifically. It's just a device to claim that "they" say something, when the person just wants to pass on their own personal views with an appearance of authority.
Speaking of Limbaugh & gutlessness, how much courage did it take for Rehm to denounce him in her sermonette against him? What would have been courageous would have been a denunciation of someone like Bill Maher for the far worse things he said. But, he's a noble liberal instead of an evil conservative, so he gets a pass from fellow lefty Rehm.
I must say that I was SHOCKED that Rehm would stack the hour with both liberal guests and then proceed to pile on that point of view, instead of what would ordinarily be expected--challenging them.
Our taxpayer dollars at work.