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    Vitamin VHamilton Nolan
    3/18/16 9:54am

    I LOVE, just love when an Uber driver, who may even have health insurance through Obamacare, says that Obama is a disaster. A disaster! And inevitably, in my experience, the reasoning revolves around the republican assertion from his very early days as President: he’s not a leader. He doesn’t work with anyone. Simply a R talking point meant to obscure the fact that they, as publicly stated, chose not to work with him. Fascinating and sad how people will rail against their own interests. *steps off soap box*

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      BaggyTrousers3Vitamin V
      3/18/16 10:11am

      I LOVE, just love when an Uber driver, who may even have health insurance through Obamacare, says that Obama is a disaster. A disaster!

      Yes, isn’t he a disaster? Now excuse me while I divide this turnip into five pieces to feed my family.

      Sarcasm, of course. But yeah, when say “disaster” I wonder what the fuck they’re talking about. What calamitous thing has befallen this country that A) has us all on our knees and B) hasn’t happened to some degree or another to a past president? Exaggerate much, motherfuckers?

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      jcsmith2Vitamin V
      3/18/16 10:15am

      I think the thing you’re missing here is that it’s highly unlikely that’s what this Uber driver actually said. I have no doubts that it’s what Ms. Noonan heard, but I doubt that’s what they actually said...

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    barebranchHamilton Nolan
    3/18/16 10:28am

    Is there anyway to get the full text of this piece? It’s behind the WSJ paywall and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay to read the ramblings of a Lucille Bluth (minus the sense of self-awareness).

    On a related note, I’d like to see some sort of legislation passed that fines or imprisons columnists for using a driver (taxi/uber/rickshaw) as a source. It is so far beyond cliche that it’s gone past self-parody back into cliche through meta, and landed in blindingly-rage-inducing lazy crutch for over-privileged talking heads. This woman makes I’m guessing well into the 6 figures as a salary and probably has a shit-ton of extraneous income from books/speaking gigs/panels etc and she literally just quoted a taxi driver to get the pulse of “everyman”?!

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      Pull It Surprisebarebranch
      3/18/16 10:43am

      Enjoy the madness.

      Super Tuesday II didn’t so much yield results as reveal continuing trends. Donald Trump up, Hillary Clinton up.

      This is what I hear from Washington’s Republican political leaders and operatives: Wait and see. There’s still time for Mr. Trump to self-destruct, for voters to start to see through him. In the meantime, get all the delegate-selection rules, all the names and contact points for every delegate picked so far. If we have to fight it on the floor, we fight it on the floor. Or, more delightfully for sentimentalists, in smoke-filled rooms. But he must be stopped.

      From those Republicans who don’t want Mr. Trump yet recognize and to a degree respect Trump supporters’ critique of the GOP establishment—“You have failed”—there are warnings that cheating him out of the nomination, beating him not through fair cleverness but through chicanery, would break the party and ensure 2016 defeat. They look at those who say they’ll set up their own, new GOP, and think: Any jackass can knock down a barn, but it takes a man to build one. Your venture will go nowhere good. You’ll help produce a second Clinton presidency.

      Here I quote a handsome, accomplished woman normally full of spiky political observations, whom I saw at Nancy Reagan’s funeral. I asked how she feels about what’s happening. She said with a shrug that she was newly modest: “I know I don’t understand politics anymore. I know I don’t understand what’s happening.”

      Trump supporters do not comprehend the degree to which establishment figures have been concussed, and personally humbled, by his rise. They’ll sneer at this, many of them, but they should see humility as opportunity.

      From those Republicans who are Never Trump, I hear an unchanged refrain: I can’t back a man who’s essentially an improv act, who has no qualifications for the office, who’s in it from some mad sense of personal destiny. He knows what will play with the crowd but has no idea what he believes, because he believes in nothing and calculates everything. He knows “the price of everything and the value of nothing.” He is at least potentially fascist and probably racist.

      And everyone means it.

      A side story that may be the central one: It is possible there is some big, unforetold evolution going on within the Republican Party, and more suddenly than anyone would have expected. Mr. Trump is bringing Democrats in. They don’t want to be Democrats anymore, or continue their role as members of always-Democratic families, and they don’t want to vote for Hillary. They’re considering coming fully into the GOP tent. But their presence in the tent, with Mr. Trump as ringmaster means—if the party holds—the GOP transmogrifies into some wholly new jumble of political impulses. Some new issue sets, some new stands that imply a wholly new approach to what conservatism means and is.

      Readers of this column know much of this will not be unwelcome. It would be good to end illegal, as opposed to legal, immigration—and that, Mr. Trump says, is his plan. It will be good if Republicans absorb the information that no reordering of entitlement spending will be possible until Washington leaders embark on some confidence-building measures that will allow people to trust them to move fairly and realistically.

      But right now for the party it’s breakage or evolution. The latter would yield an animal that won’t look like the old elephant.

      It should probably be said again that everything had to fail for Mr. Trump to rise. You know all the failures, but since we seem to be quoting Uber drivers this cycle, I’ll offer the thoughts of one I talked to in Providence, R.I., a month ago.

      She’s for Mr. Trump. Started out against him: Who is this guy, he’s a TV star. But she listened and thought: Yeah, I agree. She knows he has an unusual biography for a president. She said most of her friends have experienced the same arc from skepticism to support. She told me her reasons, the usual, but then said something poignant. This is from memory, not notes, but I’ll put it in quotes for easy reading: “Every four years we’re serious, we try to get it right, we do our best to choose the right guy. And nothing we do works! Bush, no, Romney, no, Obama’s a disaster. But we did our best! And now we’re thinking ‘Nothing worked. Take a chance.’ And if he’s no good we’ll fire him in four years.”

      I looked at the other passenger, and our eyes locked. We’d just heard the heart of it, the bottom-line mood.

      I end with certain Trump questions that nine months in are not answered.

      I don’t know Donald Trump’s heart, not to mention his head. I am not sure he knows his heart and head. That’s part of what last summer made him captivating. I’ll never forget a veteran liberal journalist saying to me, in wonder: “I can’t stop listening to him.”

      I said, “Me too.” You never knew what he’d say next. There was a sense he didn’t know what he’d say next.

      But does he know the difference between a man who’s attempting to be a political leader and a man who is a mere commentator? Does he understand the former carries deep and particular responsibilities? Just this past week, when asked what would happen if he has most of the delegates needed and the party moves to deny him the nomination at the convention, he blithely responded: “I think you’d have riots.” Coming from a pundit or columnist that would be just another opinion. Coming from a political leader it sounded like a threat. Nice little convention you have here, shame if someone put a match to it.

      Why does he speak so carelessly and irresponsibly about things such as violence and protests at his rallies? Does he not understand American politics is always potentially a powder keg?

      He has enough imagination to have invented Donald Trump. Why doesn’t he have enough to understand the potential impact of a leader’s remarks? Does he understand the power he would have if he were a person of normal comportment?

      Mr. Trump acts surprised and wounded when people suggest he is bigoted. But anyone on social media can see that there is a portion, a quadrant, of his supporters who are rough and wild—anti-Semitic, racist. Maybe, to be charitable, a lot of them are 14-year-old boys acting out on Mom’s computer while she works her second shift. But plenty are actual adults.

      Someone once said of Franklin D. Roosevelt that he’s like the Staten Island Ferry, pulling all the garbage in his wake. FDR’s Democratic coalition did contain some garbage, from KKK-supporting Southern Democrats to New York communists. That was some wake! It was also 80 years ago.

      America is an imperfect country populated by imperfect people, but there would be a reason Mr. Trump draws the particular kind of garbage he draws. What is it?

      And the central unanswered question: Is Donald Trump just a nut carried along by forces he himself doesn’t understand? Or is he something more than that, and more confounding?

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      barebranchPull It Surprise
      3/18/16 10:54am

      I guess I should thank you, but perhaps instead I should be more careful what I wish for next time.

      God that was a whole lot of word salad but one part particularly struck me — “Mr. Trump is bringing Democrats in. They don’t want to be Democrats anymore, or continue their role as members of always-Democratic families, and they don’t want to vote for Hillary.” I will acknowledge that I have not talked to many Uber drivers, or really very many people in general, about politics this season, but I call BS on that remark. There is exactly zero percentage of the population who in 2016 that has voted Democratic at any time in the last 16 (if not 32 years) that is all of sudden fed up with the Democratic party and is now jumping ship to Donald Trump. People who are disappointed in Obama are generally disappointed that he wasn’t liberal enough.

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    GeorgeGeoffersonLivesHamilton Nolan
    3/18/16 9:37am

    How magnanimous of her to consult the help! Truly, this beautiful gin blossom is a national treasure.

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      Reg TidswellGeorgeGeoffersonLives
      3/18/16 9:40am

      A gin blossom is a fine cocktail on a torrid weekend afternoon.

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      IanGeorgeGeoffersonLives
      3/18/16 9:44am

      “Do you like this yellow blouse, Fritz?”

      “Stunning, madame.”

      “What is your take on Eastern European economics during the slave trade?”

      “Shocking, madame.”

      “Thank you, Fritz.”

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    benjaminalloverHamilton Nolan
    3/18/16 9:40am

    Give the doddering old biddy a break. 2016 is a frightening and confusing place for her.

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      Chuck Schwabenjaminallover
      3/18/16 10:12am

      The policies she champions are without mercy, therefore no quarter shall be given.

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      benjaminalloverChuck Schwa
      3/18/16 10:17am

      If not clear, I’m mocking rather than sympathizing sincerely.

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    GeorgeGeoffersonLivesHamilton Nolan
    3/18/16 9:47am

    Man, when I was still following Wonkette back in the day, my most favorite feature was their Peggy Noonan stories. They burned the hell out of her, like extra crispy burnt.

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      KrugerrantGeorgeGeoffersonLives
      3/19/16 2:43am

      This feels like a hollow copy of the old Wonkette pieces. Like HamNo crawled inside their carcass and is wearing it like a costume. It's actually pretty embarrassing.

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      GeorgeGeoffersonLivesKrugerrant
      3/19/16 3:33am

      Admittedly, it’s a shadow of the treatment Newell and others gave Peggy. I guess I disagree up to a point, though, in that I think it’s passable.

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    SpringSprungHamilton Nolan
    3/18/16 9:42am

    “Uber driver?”

    Yes Miss Noonan?
    “Uber driver, you’re my best friend”.

    Go on Miss Noonan.

    Peggy taketh the driver’s hand and tries to focus on his face through the opium fog: “You are driver, you are”.

    Yes’m

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      TakahashiSpringSprung
      3/18/16 10:08am

      Dianne Wiest playing the role of Peggy Noonan.

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      XrdsAlumSpringSprung
      3/18/16 11:08am

      We laugh, but I know a narcissistic and dimwitted woman of about her vintage who talks earnestly about all her "friends" who work at the markets and stores where she shops and how much they love her. At least the WSJ didn't give her an opinion column.

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    OMG!PONIES!Hamilton Nolan
    3/18/16 10:05am

    “So Hoke, what do you think about Donald Trump?”

    “Well, Miss Daisy... I reckon what I have to say about that constipated tangerine, it won’t like to please you. Of course, Miss Daisy, I also reckon that that self-same ambulatory diseased spleen has said a great many things that would please a person of your heritage and complexion. So I’ll just set up here and drive this car and keep my undoubtedly impertinent opinions to myself.”

    “That’s a good man, Hoke. And I’m glad to see you got that license plate I wanted.”

    “Yes, Miss Daisy. 14CV88. Just like you told me. The one with the Confederate flag on it.”

    “That isn’t racist, is it Hoke?”

    “Not exactly my place to say, Miss Daisy. Though it sure do make it look like you support slavery, white supremacy, and violent insurrection.”

    “Well I’m no racist, Hoke. I even have several Negro friends.”

    “Several, Miss Daisy? I’m your employee. Your son pays me to drive you around."

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      Low Information BoaterHamilton Nolan
      3/18/16 9:51am

      I applaud her for using a designated driver.

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        norbiznessHamilton Nolan
        3/18/16 9:37am

        Possible side effects of Xanax include night sweats, gettin’ all hungry for Funyuns for no reason, ability to convert dolphins to Christianity, and made-up conversations with imaginary personages pulled out of your ass 2 hours before deadline

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          Netflix and ShillHamilton Nolan
          3/18/16 11:44am

          How Noonan actually sees the working class:

          “Sire, the peasants are revolting!”

          “Yes, they are, aren’t they?”

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            pthomas745Netflix and Shill
            3/18/16 12:46pm

            Stolen directly from Krugman’s column this morning...and millions of other sources of course.

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            Netflix and Shillpthomas745
            3/18/16 12:58pm

            Stolen directly from Krugman’s column this morning...and millions of other sources of course.

            Guilty as charged, but I prefer borrowed. It just seemed so fitting.

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