Some on the radical left want Trump to win?!?

[Hibush]

Progressives had to pay a price for eight years of The Smug Fool Who Sometimes Gave Good(-Sounding) Speeches, and that price was Donald Trump: the worst possible Republican candidate.

I'm intrigued by this formulation. When I saw Obama talk at the 2004 convention, I thought he sounded a lot like a college professor which made him very relatable to this college professor. You must find a professorial manner at least familiar, probably relatable even.

This same manner is widely interpreted as smugness outside academe, especially in circles that are not confident in their ways of knowing.

Since you are obviously not in that latter group, can you describe a little more how the smugness perception developed from a style that is otherwise normal in our circles?

I'm genuinely interested, because the perceptions vary so much for reasons I don't think I get.

[Wahoo Redux]

Progressives had to pay a price for eight years of The Smug Fool Who Sometimes Gave Good(-Sounding) Speeches, and that price was Donald Trump: the worst possible Republican candidate.

I'm intrigued by this formulation. When I saw Obama talk at the 2004 convention, I thought he sounded a lot like a college professor which made him very relatable to this college professor. You must find a professorial manner at least familiar, probably relatable even.

This same manner is widely interpreted as smugness outside academe, especially in circles that are not confident in their ways of knowing.

Since you are obviously not in that latter group, can you describe a little more how the smugness perception developed from a style that is otherwise normal in our circles?

I'm genuinely interested, because the perceptions vary so much for reasons I don't think I get.

Zealous conservatives resent Obama because he was a) competent, b) an ethical person, c) a good public persona at home and abroad, and d) popular when what they were really, really hoping for was a Trump-level eff-up.  Since Trump is such an eff-up, expect the resentment toward Obama to boomerang back around.  That, and the zealots use 44 as a rallying point like the "Here we go" cheer at a football game.

I will say that the Trump silver lining is that his presidency did expose the racist, homophobic, xenophobic underbelly of America.  "Hitting rock bottom" is a concept for those recovering from addiction because it is generally only then, when things are so bad one can no longer ignore the lifestyle damage, that one confronts one's problems.  We as a country may be there now, finally (and yes, there has been a great deal of progress, just maybe not as much as we thought).

[writingprof]

Progressives had to pay a price for eight years of The Smug Fool Who Sometimes Gave Good(-Sounding) Speeches, and that price was Donald Trump: the worst possible Republican candidate.

I'm intrigued by this formulation. When I saw Obama talk at the 2004 convention, I thought he sounded a lot like a college professor which made him very relatable to this college professor. You must find a professorial manner at least familiar, probably relatable even.

Actually, most of the professors I work with are so diffident that they speak in uptalk? In which even declarative sentences are delivered as if they are questions? They've trained each other to believe that a confident assertion is somehow problematic?

So, no, I didn't find Obama's conversational manner to be reminiscent of my colleagues'. I found him to be supremely self-confident, patronizing, and vainglorious. Smug, in other words.

Good(-sounding) speeches, though.

[Wahoo Redux]

I found him to be supremely self-confident, patronizing, and vainglorious. Smug, in other words.

Those are certainly good reasons to denounce a presidency. 

As always, good thinking, WP.

[writingprof]

I found him to be supremely self-confident, patronizing, and vainglorious. Smug, in other words.

Those are certainly good reasons to denounce a presidency. 

As always, good thinking, WP.

Ah, but you're leaving out the other, crucial part of my original formulation. Smugness alone is to be expected in a president. Obama was a smug fool.

Or do you care to defend the mishandling of the Arab Spring, the pointless escalation of the "war" in Afghanistan, the Russia "reset," the "red line" fiasco, et cetera, ad infinitum?

[Wahoo Redux]

I found him to be supremely self-confident, patronizing, and vainglorious. Smug, in other words.

Those are certainly good reasons to denounce a presidency. 

As always, good thinking, WP.

Ah, but you're leaving out the other, crucial part of my original formulation. Smugness alone is to be expected in a president. Obama was a smug fool.

Or do you care to defend the mishandling of the Arab Spring, the pointless escalation of the "war" in Afghanistan, the Russia "reset," the "red line" fiasco, et cetera, ad infinitum?

Escalation of the war Dubya started?  Escalation in support of American troops?  Didn't know we should keep the war on the down-low.  I am aware that Obama took out ISIS, the other war Dubya started.  What would you have had Obama do about the "Arab Spring"?  Perhaps Russia is not open to an American president unless Russia can manipulate the American president----and this was a problem which started with Dubya and, frankly, was hardly an international crisis.

And maybe argue with this guy about "Red Lining"

By October 2013, without a bomb being dropped, the Bashar Assad regime had admitted having a massive chemical weapons program it had never before acknowledged, agreed to give it up and submitted to a multinational coalition that removed and destroyed the deadly trove. From my perspective at the Pentagon, this seemed like an incontrovertible, if inelegant, example of what academics call "coercive diplomacy," using the threat of force to achieve an outcome military power itself could not even accomplish.

Yet the near unanimous verdict among observers is that this episode was a failure. Even the president's sympathizers call the handling of the red line statement and its crossing a "debacle," an "amateurish improvisation" or the administration's "worst blunder." They contend that Obama whiffed at a chance to show resolve, that for the sake of maintaining credibility, the U.S. would have been better off had the administration not pursued the diplomatic opening and used force instead. In this sense, a mythology has evolved around the red line episode—that if only the U.S. had used force, then it could have not only have addressed the chemical weapons threat, but solved the Syria conflict altogether.

But this conventional wisdom is wrong. Of course, some of the criticism can be explained by politics, with partisans unwilling to give Obama credit for any success. But many others criticize the policy less for its outcome than for the way it came about. This line of judgement reveals a deep—and misguided—conviction in Washington foreign policy circles that a policy must be perfectly articulated in order to be successful—that, in a sense, the means matter more than the ends. Far from a failure, the "red line" episode accomplished everything it set out to do—in fact, it surpassed our expectations. But the fact that it appeared to occur haphazardly and in a scattered way was enough to brand it as a failure in Washington's eyes.

Zealous conservatives just don't want to see it.

et cetera, ad infinitum.

Or, in other words WP, you're denigrating Obama because his administration made mistakes and missteps?  What president hasn't?  Are you looking for molehills because you want mountains?  Should we compare 44 to any other president, particularly 20th century Republican presidents?

[Hibush]

Progressives had to pay a price for eight years of The Smug Fool Who Sometimes Gave Good(-Sounding) Speeches, and that price was Donald Trump: the worst possible Republican candidate.

I'm intrigued by this formulation. When I saw Obama talk at the 2004 convention, I thought he sounded a lot like a college professor which made him very relatable to this college professor. You must find a professorial manner at least familiar, probably relatable even.

Actually, most of the professors I work with are so diffident that they speak in uptalk? In which even declarative sentences are delivered as if they are questions? They've trained each other to believe that a confident assertion is somehow problematic?

So, no, I didn't find Obama's conversational manner to be reminiscent of my colleagues'. I found him to be supremely self-confident, patronizing, and vainglorious. Smug, in other words.

Good(-sounding) speeches, though.

I think the diffident-professor environment is a telling difference. I might also have a different reaction if I were in that challenging environment. (I hear uptalk so rarely on campus that I suspect the students drive off anyone who engages in it.)

Given that, can you describe the leadership style that--to you--conveys informed competence without trespassing into smugness?

[secundem_artem]

[quote author=writingprof link=topic=1533.msg36652#msg36652

So, no, I didn't find Obama's conversational manner to be reminiscent of my colleagues'. I found him to be supremely self-confident, patronizing, and vainglorious. Smug, in other words.

[/quote]

Wow.  If you thought Obama was smug, I really got ask what your opinion is of Ted Cruz. 

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I found him to be supremely self-confident, patronizing, and vainglorious. Smug, in other words.

Those are certainly good reasons to denounce a presidency. 

As always, good thinking, WP.

Ah, but you're leaving out the other, crucial part of my original formulation. Smugness alone is to be expected in a president. Obama was a smug fool.

Or do you care to defend the mishandling of the Arab Spring, the pointless escalation of the "war" in Afghanistan, the Russia "reset," the "red line" fiasco, et cetera, ad infinitum?

There's nothing wrong with being self-confident. Also, if you think Obama was/is smug, then what do you think of the current stain in our country's history?

[Hegemony]

Obama was not a perfect president. I disagree with a number of his policies and decisions, some of them vociferously. But compared to what we have now, he was a shining radiance of wisdom and professionalism.  Heck, I would prefer Mike Pence to what we have now. I would prefer a banana slug to what we have now.

[Treehugger]

Obama was not a perfect president. I disagree with a number of his policies and decisions, some of them vociferously. But compared to what we have now, he was a shining radiance of wisdom and professionalism.  Heck, I would prefer Mike Pence to what we have now. I would prefer a banana slug to what we have now.

.... given that few banana slugs are malignant narcissists.

[Larimar]

I would prefer a banana slug to what we have now.

LOL! Me too.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I would prefer a banana slug to what we have now.

LOL! Me too.

Same. ^

[writingprof]

Trump . . . is a disgrace.
Cruz . . . is merely punchable.
Obama . . . was a smug fool.

[RatGuy]

I live in a deeply red state, and most of my friends supported either Warren or Sanders. Almost all of my Warren friends are supporting Biden, and almost all of my Sanders friends are pro-Trump. I think I posted about this on the 2020 Election board, and someone commented that ideologically Trump and Sanders shared some similarities in their populist bases.

That said, my Sanders friends are quite strident and even shrill in their condemnation of Biden. I don't think its about ideology -- I think its about meme consumption.