2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Someone sent me the video of Bernie's hour-long town hall in Wisconsin [View all]calimary
(84,318 posts)WHEN was it EVER reminded or recounted or reasserted that THE REASON President Obama "didn't deliver" was because he was BLOCKADED and OBSTRUCTED at EVERY POINT? From the get-go. From his first Inauguration Night. WHEN? Answer? NEVER. NOT ONCE! Not even from our supposed allies among the talking head troupe.
Frustrates the hell outta me that this was never the second sentence after any first sentence talking about how President Obama "didn't deliver." You leave it there, with no context, and that's the impression that's left there, and that's the takeaway and after you keep on issuing that grossly incomplete statement, that then becomes the widely-understood and accepted "truth".
Conversely, the media actually DID do that with Hillary Clinton. Hardly a mention of her was EVER made without adding the extra phrase pointing out how supposedly "unpopular" she was. How she was a "flawed candidate." No. In all truth, she wasn't. She wasn't any more "flawed" or "unpopular" than any other candidate. It's just that everyone else didn't have this label attached, as she did. I've sometimes wondered, indeed - strongly suspected - that some memo had to have gone out from some upper level of management in the newsrooms that this mention MUST be included in every reference to Hillary Clinton. In much the same way as trump's own "Crooked Hillary" was repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated - it was laminated onto her as a nickname, and it got WIDE usage among the enemy camp. Unfortunately, among the NON-enemy camp, it sunk in because of all the repetition, and soon became this undercurrent that left a bad taste in the mouth whenever Hillary's name was mentioned.
Pavlov's dogs and all that.
THE REASON President Obama could not get more done was because he was OBSTRUCTED. By whom? THE REPUBLI-CONS. BY CHOICE and BY DESIGN. And by Jove, NOBODY EVER brought that up during the coverage of the campaign. Which started to look pretty suspicious to me - as though that, too, was BY CHOICE, and BY DESIGN. And what happened? The low-info voters (translation: gullible dumb-asses) out there had only one take-away for their own limited thinking: "Obama didn't do anything." NOBODY ever entertained any notion as to WHY that was. And they wound up favoring and voting for the very people who kept him from doing as much as he could - BY CHOICE AND BY DESIGN. And that false bit of absolute fake-gold-plated bullshit became a truth. And when those voters get nothing but a world of hurt, they won't understand why. Not a clue. And that, too, will be reinforced. Regardless whether there's nobody left to blame - as there will be next month, when the bad guys take over ALL the power positions in Washington.
Shit - we have NO machinery or infrastructure to advance this. Nobody even supposedly on our side seems the least bit interested in this. INFURIATING!!!