Comments

1
Yeah, no shit, Trump's been republican politics-as-usual the whole time. What the hell did Klarman think Rubio, or Cruz, or Gingritch, or whoever was going to do that Trump hasn't done?
2
I don't understand what the complaint is? It's not like we didn't put a bunch of effort behind liberal idiots over the years (Ed Murray, anyone?). This is one of those posts that feels more like stroke material for the author than based in any desire to educate and inform a reader.

People didn't vote for Obama thinking he'd exponentially increase drone bombing, be unable to get us out of the middle east, or give away billions to banks and auto manufacturers. In retrospect, we all should have known, but we didn't. Are we just as dumb as Mr. Klarman?
3
@2:

Maybe you're too young to remember the chaotic days of 2008/2009, but I'm pretty sure the bank and auto industry bailouts (AKA Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP) were initiated by Obama's predecessor.
4
This doesn't shock me. What does shock me is how little money it takes to have such influence. $7 million? That is more or less nothing to a billionaire. And the return on his investment just with the tax cut is so much greater than this.
5
@4 buying state legislatures to gerrymander the 2010 redistricting has got to be the best investment ever.
6
$222,000 is hardly $7 million.
7
Sadly, we can't fix stupid. If we could, we'd still have problems where people's actual goals were in conflict, but there would be fewer disagreements overall.
8
@2: Obama was an unknown figure who talked a good game campaigning. Had Clinton won and done what Democrats have done for decades* (or had Sanders prevailed and then turned out to be a neoliberal all along - unlikely, given his record, though he's certainly more militant than I want), to anyone's supposed surprise, I'd say you have more of a point, but people legitimately didn't have as much info on Obama.

*Signed off on slightly lower tax cuts for the rich than Republicans, deregulated finance, cut social welfare programs, pushed abstinence-only propaganda programs in schools, been completely indistinguishable for Republicans regarding imperialism, been less openly hostile to non-White Americans, been legitimately less hostile toward the queers and the womens, maintained existing environmental regulations while still refusing to seriously try to eliminate fossil fuel use (actually necessary to reverse catastrophic global warming at this point, if it's even still possible), privatized a bunch of public services through 'partnerships' or 'hybrid markets' like the ACA established or like the putative Liberal case for school vouchers (which are, in fact, massive subsidies of private, for-profit corporations with public money)
9
I agree with Dan that it makes no sense for Republican mega-donors who aren't misogynistic, queer-hostile, Christian dominionists to back Republicans in the first place, since the Democrats do a substantially better job of fluffing the ultra-wealthy while actually convincing a majority of the country that they're not fucking us over for the sole benefit of parasitic capitalists. But, again, I think it comes back to people being too stupid or delusional to look at the empirical record versus believing the parties' false branding.
10
I’d yawn, if this puritanical idealism of yours weren’t so lethal. Fun fact: it doesn’t get any better than Obama for president and we were lucky to see somebody like him in the Oval Office. It’s likely we never will again have somebody as great as he was. You holier than thou idealists are noble but noble does not equal wise. The wisdom that will come in time is sadly acquired on the backs of the most downtrodden when it comes to politics. The only people who should matter when casting your vote are those less fortunate than yourself. Anything else will kill us all and wreak a fresh new hell on those least able to pull through it.

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