{"id":180759,"date":"2017-01-12T19:15:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T00:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/01\/12\/even-the-liberal-new-republic\/"},"modified":"2017-01-12T19:15:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T00:15:00","slug":"even-the-liberal-new-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/01\/12\/even-the-liberal-new-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"Even the Liberal New Republic\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/JcA0x.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/JcA0x.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"250\" \/><\/a>While I have said on many occasions that the new <i>New Republic<\/i> is better than when it was owned by virulent bigot Marty Peretz.<\/p>\n<p>I find the articles far more thoughtful, and the self satisfied smugness and arrogant idiocy is in far smaller supply.<\/p>\n<p>Still, sometimes it returns to form, and the stupidity is epic, such as when Senior Editor Jeet Heer suggests that in 2020, <a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/139756\/democrats-run-celebrity-president\">the Democratic party should run a celebrity rather than an accomplished politician for President<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Some points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That&#8217;s what we did this year.&nbsp; Hillary Clinton&#8217;s viability in politics has always been as a celebrity, wife of the Governor of Arkansas, and then wife of the President of the United States.<sup>*<\/sup><\/li>\n<li>Hillary lost.<\/li>\n<li>Trump did not win through celebrity, but through selling the <b>lie<\/b> that he cares about the ordinary working folks.  He did that by pointing out the <b>truth<\/b> that the the celebrity-political complex did now.<\/li>\n<li>It reinforces the idea that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the real world.&nbsp; It&#8217;s why the hit musical is called <i>La La Land<\/i>, and not <i>The Real World<\/i>.<sup>\u2020<\/sup><\/li>\n<li>It serves to deflect from the real failure here, which was that the party establishment, in a stunning exhibition of solipsism, nominated one of the few political figures on the face of the earth<sup>\u2021<\/sup> who could lose to Trump, because of this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I get it: Nominating Meryl Streep is easier than fixing the party, and you support stupid lazy.<\/p>\n<p>Gaaaahhhh!&nbsp; I hate pseudo-intellectual contrarians.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">This is not to say that she is not a capable person, it&#8217;s just that if you look at political leaders, they don&#8217;t get to be the Senator from the 3<sup>rd<\/sup> largest state in the US, and then Secretary of State, and the nominee of the party without being a governor, or a mayor, or a congressman, or a city councilman.<\/span><br \/><sup>\u2020<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">Also, if they called it <i>The Real World<\/i>, MTV would sue their asses.<\/span><br \/><sup>\u2021<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">Other names that spring to mind as other potential losers, are Clayton Williams, Adlai Stevenson, Kathleen McGinty, Patrick Murphy, Evan Bayh, Ted Strickland , Kathleen Kennedy Townshend, Martha Coakley, Frank Murkowski (lost to Palin, for F%$#&#8217;s sake), and George P. Mahoney.  (Had to spend some time on the Google machine to get a list even this short.)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While I have said on many occasions that the new New Republic is better than when it was owned by virulent bigot Marty Peretz. I find the articles far more thoughtful, and the self satisfied smugness and arrogant idiocy is in far smaller supply. Still, sometimes it returns to form, and the stupidity is epic, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[790,374,405,406,403],"class_list":["post-180759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-celebrity","tag-politics","tag-presidential-campaign","tag-stupid","tag-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180759"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}