Fuck Me (Susan Rice)

Politics & Elections
1

Susan Rice has tweeted that she’s interested in challenging Maine senator and Kavanaugh enabler Susan Collins in 2020.

That is a horrible idea.

Don’t get me wrong — I think Susan Rice would be a fine senator, and certainly better than Collins. I think Susan Rice did a fine job in her roles as UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor. When people tell me they’re surprised what an asshole Lindsey Graham turned out to be, I tell them that his (and McCain’s) ridiculously unfair treatment of Susan Rice over her Benghazi interviews should have made it clear to any idiot that he was an asshole.

But that’s exactly why she shouldn’t run. She was made a symbol of evil by Graham, McCain, Limbaugh, Hannity, and the Fox News network in general. Next to HRC, she’s probably been treated more unfairly than any other prominent woman politician in recent memory. It’s a damn shame that that shit works, but clearly, it does. We hoped that people weren’t so fucking stupid that the Trump and Fox News propaganda against Hillary would work, but clearly, it did. There are literally millions of people who would not have voted for Trump if it had been, say, Biden running against him. They say that they didn’t like much about Trump, but that anybody was better than Hillary.

It doesn’t help to observe that those people are idiots. They still vote, and in large numbers. They still get their information from Fox News, bolstered by the MSM’s largely stenographic reporting of Trump speeches and rallies. They will vote against Susan Rice for the same reason they voted against Hillary, i.e. because Hannity and Carlson and Fox and Friends have told them that she is evil.

Susan Collins won in a landslide in 2014. She’s probably not vulnerable, even after her despicable decision on Kavanaugh, so it probably doesn’t matter who the Dems put up against her.

Unless it’s Susan Rice. Susan Rice will energize the Republican base more than anybody else I can think of who might oppose Collins. She might even energize them enough to affect the Presidential election in Maine, since Trump lost Maine by only 22,000 votes. She might even energize enough people outside of Maine to affect the Presidential election in other states, because you know she will be demonized by Fox News every night for months before the election.

Again, it’s too bad that crap works, but again, if we learned one thing from the last election, it’s that idiocy is invincible.

Please, Susan, don’t do it.

2

people say all kinds of stuff that never happens.

Bill Maher had a funny comment on Maine - the population is “Stephen King, 2 lobsters and a bear”

3

That’s ridiculous. There are moose, too. Lots of moose!

4

I understand what you’re saying, but it comes awfully danged close to allowing the opposition to exercise a “heckler’s veto” over a party’s nominations. Not a good idea.

5

Is she even from Maine? Seriously doubt this was anything more than an offhand comment.

6

why the fuck did you feel it necessary to title this “Fuck Me (Susan Rice)”?

Posters have been asked nicely not to put profanity in thread titles, and this one appears to be unnecessary and perhaps sexist.

7

Collins popularity had already been declining and this vote won’t help her … with the state’s general electorate anyway.

There are more who identify as Independent in Maine than there are either Rs or Ds, more moderates than either conservatives or liberals. Last time she won those groups handily and even had a sizable number of Ds support her. The vast majority of voters in Maine have more than a High School education and she won them by large margins too.

This was a move to stave off a primary challenge from the right, and it will do that, but it will cost her. Fewer Ds will cross over to vote for her next time and many Maine Independents, not just female ones, will begrudge this vote.

Maine is not a Trump state. It went Clinton by 3.

I have no idea if Rice is the best to go against her but being vilified by Fox is not the death knell it would be in some other states.

8

Basically, it sounds as if the problem is that we need someone with name recognition, but not so much name recognition that the republicans have started their smear campaign against that name.

I think that the better option is to not play the game by the rules that the opposition has set up that it does not itself follow.

9

Not entirely true. Maine went Clinton and Trump.

10

And that’s why the rest of your post is irrelevant. If Bernie Sanders had been the nominee, it’s Bernie Sanders that Fox News would have lied about. If Biden had been the noniminee, it’s Biden that Fox News would have lied about.

This notion that there was something about HRC that made Fox willing to lie about her, and that it wouldn’t have applied to anybody else, is ludicrous on its face. She was the best qualified candidate in a generation; if Fox, Breitbart, Facebook, and Russian interference could torpedo her, the could torpedo anybody.

There was no way to win.

11

The state popular vote, which is what is meaningful for the Senate race implications, went Clinton by 3. Yes, the electoral votes went 3 to Clinton and one to Trump, but that really is not meaningful to this discussion.

12

Better qualified than Al Gore? How do you figure?

13

For a start, Al Gore wasn’t running.

14

You said she was “the best qualified candidate in a generation”. As she was born scant months before Gore — who’d of course been a qualified candidate for president not too long before this latest go-round — then I figured that she wouldn’t, in fact, have been the best-qualified candidate in a generation if he’d been a better-qualified candidate in that same generation. Or do you see those as different generations?

15

Democrats as a group need to stop pandering to “their base” and being afraid of offending everyone else, and start taking the lead role by having an actual strategy and a real message. And everyone needs to stop wringing their hands over whether a woman or minority is electable, and just pick a good candidate with a strong message and popular appeal. Hillary Clinton wasn’t a good choice not because she was a woman; it was because she was Hillary Clinton, who was a combination of uninspiring to many, constantly searching for “the right thing to say”, and decades of being the target of largely baseless conspiracy theories, her actual legislative and executive experience as a senator and Secretary of State (not to mention the years she spent making Bill Clinton electable) notwithstanding.

The candidate I would most like to see the Democratic Party run in 2024 or 2028 (depending on situation) is Tammy Duckworth, not because of any diversity appeal or other nonsense, but because she speaks her mind, has genuinely altruistic motives behind her politics, and if elected would be their first president in a generation who has actually served and suffered in combat. After two of the longest and most expensive wars in US history, I think we need a president with pertinent experience and good personal reason to question the need to go to war and bear the human costs of the consequences. The fact that it would also piss off the white nationalists and xenophobes is just a plus. And I look forward to seeing anyone try to “swiftboat” a double amputee combat veteran be exposed for the hypocrites they are.

Stranger

16

Sorry, was unaware of the title thing, and the mods are welcome to change it. It wasn’t “necessary,” it’s just what I thought when I heard she wanted to run. And any sexism is in your mind.

17

But Clinton had had decades of smears against her, whereas with the other folks, people would have had to hear, and believe, new smears.

18

Playing the game by their rules would be a vilification campaign against Republicans. Refusing to acknowledge that sometimes life isn’t fair isn’t playing by their rules, it’s playing into their hands.

19

If I weren’t the OP, with sort of an obligation to comment, I wouldn’t even bother with this. Yes, Fox would have lied about Bernie, but no, it wouldn’t have a years-long backlog of material that had already poisoned its audience against him, and made them prepared to believe almost anything bad about him. Beyond that, although Fox was the most despicable, the entire Republican establishment had piled on with Benghazi, emails, etc. They had been running against her for four years, not four months.

Bernie would have won if he had been the candidate, and so would have Biden.

20

…not putting forward a candidate that you concede would make a “fine senator” because of a fear of partisan attacks is about as textbook an example of “playing into their hands” as you can get. The decision not to go with Rice wouldn’t be based on the qualities that Rice brings to the table but a fear of what “the other side” might do instead.

If Rice is better than any other candidate that wants to run then put her forward. If not: then pick someone else. But don’t let the opposition dictate who should run. That is the worst thing you could possibly do.

No he wouldn’t have. But that’s a subject for an entirely different thread.