Gibbs et al = John Turturro in Miller's Crossing

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

It is common to be scammed.

That's life... there is a benefit in deceit and manipulation so we are sometimes deceived and manipulated.

But even in the world of con-men and politicians there is supposed to be a line.

Steal the old lady's retirement, sure... but don't then drive by her house to spray-paint "sucker" on it!


What the WH doesn't seem to understand is that these risible clods who thought Obama was not the most centrist candidate in the primary field (because the Obama campaign kept telling them he was a big liberal) are not a side-show.

They are part of the man's fricking base.

Obama would not be President without the people who get mocked and eye-rolled. Clinton would have won the primaries handily if the Obama campaign had worked to shed itself of the professional left.

And that is the problem with treating the left as a tiny irrelevant splinter group. Splinter or not, their numbers were decisive.

Actually, it isn't Turturro in Miler's Crossing.

It is the Brady Bunch episode where Marsha gives the nerdy girl a make-over and the now-beautiful girl steals Marsha's boyfriend and laughs at her.

[BeyondGeography]

1. Clinton would have won the primaries handily if she opposed IWR

Next.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

5. Come the 2012 election campaign they will be more like ..

.... Joliet Jake to Carrie Fisher :

"No I didn't. Honest... I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD. "

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

6. And pie is delicious.

If you cannot comprehend the words in front of you why advertise the fact?

Obama would have lost if he dropped his trousers at rallies and shit on the stage.

Kucinich would have won if he was a really good hypnotist.

Dodd would have won if only people whose names start with "D" had their votes counted.


Your childish primary-obsessed vomited OCD "comment" is irrelevant to anything in the OP.

[BeyondGeography]

7. So are doughnuts; they have a big hole in the middle

Like the OP.

[cliffordu]

2. The independents are the voters that were decisive.

We think our numbers are vastly greater than they really are.

Just like cable news thinks it's the end all and be all.

[Enrique]

3. Kudos for comparing it to both Miller's Crossing and the Brady Bunch

that episode was named "My fair Brady", by the way. ;-)

[Pirate Smile]

4. Here is a different take on it. How accurate is it - I'm not sure. I caucused for Obama in Iowa so

I understand that there was a group that made the jump to Obama early - when most of the villagers and the Dem infrastructure still thought Hillary couldn't lose. But that was a long time ago.

Gibbs' disdain

There was no percentage in Robert Gibbs' offhand attack on the "professional left," which will serve to irritate people who could be helpful and fuel a distracting narrative.

But a key thing to understand about Obama's presidency is the unusual relationship between the former Illinois Senator and the traditional Democratic infrastructure of power. Most candidates build their campaigns by courting one constituency -- auto-workers, Asian-Americans, tech executives, etc. -- at a time, often for many years. But Obama had no shot at most of these groups. Hillary Clinton had been courting the key components of the institutional party -- most of big labor, members of Congress, the civil rights establishment -- for decades. John Edwards had tacked far enough left to win the allegiance of anti-war and anti-trade factions.

Obama -- making a virtue out of necessity -- didn't bother with much of the deal-making and courtship because he didn't have a chance anyway. He focused instead on building an alternative infrastructure of his own supporters, and even an alternative online structure that largely went around a liberal blogosphere that was very ambivalent about his post-partisan posture and nuance on Iraq.

So Obama went into Iowa with, for instance, no major union support. To the extent that he owed a debt to labor, it was to internal SEIU figures -- like Patrick Gaspard -- who had kept that juggernaut neutral. He had positioned himself against Clinton on the war -- but was not the overwhelming candidate of prominent anti-war figures.

After Iowa, everything changed. UNITE HERE and, then, SEIU backed him to the hilt. He inherited Edwards' liberal institutional support. He became the clear alternative to Clinton's past support, and refusal to apologize, on the war.

But after Iowa, from the vantage point of Gibbs and others who had begun two years earlier, was very late in the game. If you were with Obama before Iowa, you were making an investment. If you were there after Iowa, you were jumping on the bandwagon, going with the frontrunner. You would still incur gratitude -- but the risk you were taking just wasn't the same.

Ultimately, the organized left got on board, of course. They couldn't do anything else and many -- like MoveOn, which vastly expanded its email list -- enhanced their own strength in the process. They worked hard for Obama's election.

But Gibbs' dig is a reminder that at the heart of this White House is a belief that Obama is president despite the Democratic Party, not because of it.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0810/Gibbs_disdain.html?showall