Sidebar TGIF 9/2/22: Barack and Hillary Were Right, Too

President Biden's comments in Philly got me thinking back to when two other prominent Democrats got themselves into hot water talking about Republicans.

Here's what Barack Obama said that got him into hot water with the media and the Republicans, who purposefully ignored the most important part of his point: that people who are either ignored by politicians, or who are repeatedly given promises that are not kept, and to at least some degree, were never intended to be kept, are rightfully and understandably angry and frustrated with politicians. 

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

And, here's is what Hillary Clinton said that got her into hot water with the medial and the Republicans, who gleefully ignored the most important part of her point: not all of Trump's supporters are worthy of disdain, and that only a Trump supporter can put themselves in a basket.  

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? [Laughter/applause]. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

But the other basket, the other basket, and I know because I see friends from all over America here. I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas, as well as you know New York and California. But that other basket of people who are people who feel that government has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they are just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

Both statements are inelegant, at best, but they are not the evil, hateful statements they were cracked up to be by the media, the punditry, or the Republicans. 

The media, which has an obligation to report the truth, and to separate news articles from opinions, didn't do a good job with either of these statements. Too often, they would report on the most inflammatory parts and, if you read the rest of the article, you could probably find a link to the entire quote. Of course, they know how few people read the entire article, right? Oh, hell - let's be honest - they know how many people read only the headline. 

The pundits, with no such obligation to the truth, blatantly ignored anything other than the most incendiary words - it was as if the rest of the quotes were not even spoken. I remember watching clips from the talk shows and the cable shows, and if anyone tried to mention the full breadth of the comments, they were shut down immediately: "Yeah, but he said..." "Yeah, but she said..."  "Yeah, but no one's going to remember that part, they're only going to remember the part that we're talking about..." "Yeah, but..."

The real villains here, in all three cases, IMO, are the Republicans who whole-heartedly embraced the soundbite, particularly Clinton's 'deplorables' comment. They owned it! They put themselves in that basket, they put their colleagues in that basket, they put their donors in that basket, they put their constituents in that basket, and they put everyone who voted for any Republican in that basket.  

It was almost as if they didn't even know there was a whole nother basket of Republicans who were not "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic - you name it." And if they knew those people existed, they sure didn't care about them when they accepted the title of "deplorable" or, in the case of Obama's comment, when they accepted the title of "gun-clinger," "religion-clinger," "antipathist," "anti-immigrant," or "anti-trade."

I remember talking with Republican friends who said Clinton called them a deplorable, and when I explained only they could choose the deplorables basket, they were confused. And silent.

And the Republicans who were not the people Obama and Clinton were talking about? That so many of them stayed quiet while their party leaders and elected representatives called them names is something I still don't understand. 

And the same thing is happening with Biden's comments, which were talked about as if he had smeared every Republican in the country, when he very carefully said he was talking about only a specific subset of the GOP: Trump's MAGA Republicans - the ones I call RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. 

RINO, of course, is the name he gives to Republicans who disagree with him, or who don't vote with him, or who don't beg for his endorsement... you get the drift. If you don't put him first, you're not MAGA, you're a RINO. And, if you're with him, you're an American; if you're not with him, you're definitely not one. Don't believe me? Check out a recent survey question from Trumpworld.

No one - no one - in the past seven years has said worse things about Republicans generally, and about specific Republicans, than Donald Trump. No one - no one - in the past seven years has done more damage to the reputation of the Rs than Donald Trump and his supporters.

Don't blame Barack Obama. 

Don't blame Hillary Clinton. 
Don't blame Joe Biden. 

The Republicans who are spitting mad about Joe Biden calling out Donald Trump, MAGA Republicans, and MAGA extremists today have no one to blame but themselves. 

And no one said it better than Trump-defending Sen. Lindsey Graham: 

You did. You did. And you do.