Bill Richardson's out of the Democratic race. He looked good on paper.
« Because God Hates Hiroshima | Main | Obama and Anger »
Richardson's Out
09 Jan 2008 10:02 pm
Comments (34)
He looked good on paper.
He looked fat on TV.
Patton to Rommel: I read your book, you son-of-a-bitch!
on the other hand, the fat comments are dumb. He doesn't have the personality type, there's something inherently human in him that loves the old-style, face-to-face, one-on-one politicking more than meta-politics.
You also liked Tommy Thompson Matt. Judging politicians is not your strong suit.
I always liked Richardson but when he forced me to have to agree with NRO's The Corner on the hilarity of listening to him repeat that "he was Governor" he surely lost me. As Matt said, great on paper but he could have used my 10th grade debate instructor for pointers.
I'm kind of surprised he didn't move more to the left in this election to gain more support. After all, he had the most radical anti-Iraq War plan. At the Logo debate, however, he came out against both civil unions and gay marriage. You would think he would have tried to hit on more issues to try to capture the Left to ride his way to the nomination or at least to become a bigger force the bigger nominees would try to court more.
I'm sure BR looked great on the paper that MattY was handed. However, he seemed to have a tic that caused him to play the victim and try to racialize everything, including getting upset about not being allowed to pander at the UnivisionDebate*.
Plus, there was that minor issue he had about telling the truth. Namely, it was difficult for him:
youtube.com/watch?v=CifLm6z32eA
youtube.com/watch?v=mN2o208PFhg
Plus, he had so much more going for him. For instance, the ever-vigilant MSM didn't bother to ask him about his past ethnic nationalistic comments:
youtube.com/watch?v=MiszkrzoOs0
Nor did they bother to ask him about him shilling for a pan-American group at the same time as he was running for president of the U.S.:
youtube.com/watch?v=i0YRHXoygRM
Maybe MattY needs to search out other pieces of paper or something, if he wants to be a real pundit.
Drats. My * above was meant to be this. While I was clued in to how bad MariaElenaSalinas was before the UnivisionDebate, only afterwards did I find out that the other moderator isn't even a U.S. citizen. More on him at the link.
I wonder if drop-outs and other Important People (Gore) are holding back endorsements because they worry that they may look like yet another form of "piling on" Hillary. Today she played the gender card, describing Edwards and Obama as "buddies" who were ganging up on her. Maybe Obama should first get endorsements from women and then let the guys come aboard after he wins another state.
And do endorsements really mean anything to anyone other than the players involved?
Jon Stewart has John Zogby on his show and is completely destroying him. No really, it's ugly.
Zogby went like a lamb to the slaughter. He lined up the guillotine and laid down.
When has Zogby ever gotten anything right? He seems to exist just to build up liberals' hopes before they get dashed.
Richardson's a sad case. It can be truly said that the whole was less than the sum of the parts (the executive experience, the Hispanic background, the international stature). What a dreadful national candidate he made.
On the bright side, his presidential campaign probably spared us the experience of his having a disappointing career in the senate.
The Richardson campaign have already denied this.
After news of Richardson dropping out first leaked, his staff first denied it vehemently. I wonder why. It's not like they have to keep the campaign together at that point. Dude seems like he would make a nice VP or Sec State.
And about the fatness: politics don't change much from middle-school to the presidency. People like to vote for pretty/charismatic/popular people. One strong argument against Gore running was that he was too fat. It was seen as some sort of character flaw.
he wasn't hungry enough.
Does ChrisKelly have a pair of electrodes attached to his nads, with the other end plugged into to his RSS keyword alert for anything related to the Impending Brown Insurgency? And is he still acting like it's not his problem that his blogwhore obsession site (and PathologicalWiki) attracts open neo-Nazis like flies to shit?
Richardson? The Meh Candidate, alas. Strange, really, because the SW is having its electoral hoorah before the water runs dry.
Richardson isn't particularly fat, especially for a middle-aged male. But compared against (relatively speaking) the other candidates, he didn't look good.
Part of his problem was his debate style of acting like the psychiatrist during a group therapy session.
His foreign policy ideas were fairly popular, but domestically, he was acting as if the key to success in winning the Democratic nomination were distancing himself from the specter of tax-and-spend social democratic-lite liberalism and showing everyone he loved big business and the Concord Coalition. That just doesn't work the the zeitgeist of the American Democratic party of 2008. I'm not the leftiest of Democrats, so I'm actually kinda sympathetic to that sort of Clinton-style approach (although I also see considerable merits in more social spending in areas like health care), but regardless of my views, he isn't what rank-and-file Democrats want right now.
Good riddance.
Anyone who helped a freeper screw Wenn Ho Lee, and looked the other way while Enron screwed California, has no business running for President.
It's simple -- despite having a tremendous knack for one-on-one, retail, glad-handing politics, Richardson is a terrible TV politician. He had a moment to move into serious contention during the early summer, and he failed because of a series of quite awful debate performances.
He looked good on paper.
Future tombstone:
Here lies Bill Richardson
1947-2037
He Looked Good on Paper
He looked good in his service to the country and New Mexico. And always will.
With the GOP's push of xenophobia in the air, it didn't help that he looked brown and lacked the booming oratory of the other brown guy.
Unfortunately, looks, race and debate finesse matter even to Democrats and Independents, more than experience or his best call on the subject of Iraq.And in some debates, he did very well.
There is also the intangible of timing. If he chooses not to fade from the public arena, in eight years, I bet he'd do far better. With all the focus on the media darlings in the top two slots, there was simply no room for him this year.
Every presidential year, there's only room for two big competitors and one long shot stalker. The air in the room was already sucked out before he and Dodd and the others jumped in.
Part of the problem with Richardson was that he was from a small state. If he had been governor of, say, California or Florida, I suspect he would have been in the first tier of candidates.
Well, aside from appeasing the racist wingnuts by giving them Wen Ho Lee to play with (even as they ignored the REAL Chinese spy, and prominent California Republican donor and activist, Katrina Leung), and aside from pushing a plan to suck the Great Lakes dry (and piss off Canada) so the Southwest needn't face its water issues, he was just fine.
I'm glad we had a chance to see what stuff "The Hispanic With the Golden Resume`" was made of.
First at a few debates, then Meet the Press, then more debates and Richardson on the stump.
In each debate, Richardson was a stumbling, flummoxed idiot reciting chunks of his resume saying he was qualified to answer that sort of question that he then was too inept to answer. His lack of knowledge or prep for Tim Russert's show was awful. It was a painful, but well-deserved eviscerating of the boob.
On the trail, he sounded like he could have even used Dubya to coach him on being articulate.
Another poster said Richardson would be a great VP. I doubt he will get an offer unless his "Hispanichood" hands it to him - because the bumbling fool we saw is in no way fit to take on the job of the Presidency. I wondered looking at him if he had just been mindlessly promoted up the ladder by Democrats until he not only reached his Peter Principle level of incompetence, but was appointed several steps beyond that.
Thank god we've finally gotten all the actually qualified candidates out of the primary!
If he had been governor of, say, California or Florida, I suspect he would have been in the first tier of candidates.
Well he proved himself too bush league to ever win either governorship, so that's neither here nor there.
Patton to Rommel: I read your book, you son-of-a-bitch!
Ahem... "You magnificent bastard, I read your book*!
TLB: As an opponent of "identity politics'" who's your current favorite? Pretend it's a Democrat.
Good riddance. This man reeked of hubris of contempt. The 60 Minutes interview from 1999 (discussing the Wen Ho Lee affair) is still fresh in my mind.
I never understood why progressives got behind a guy who's main accomplishment was keeping an innocent man in solitary confinement for months and months just because his ego was as big as his ass.
W Action: thank you kindly for asking.
I don't mind Hillary on a personal level, and I don't Chelsea's so bad looking from certain angles. On the other hand, Obama is definitely more conservative than she is. So, it's a toss-up. But, definitely not John Edwards. If he were nominated, even John McCain would have trouble against him. Please be fair and do not nominate John Edwards.
My bad, little pig.
Comments closed January 23, 2008.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Think he'll endorse? I'm a little surprised so few have. Biden, Dodd, Gore, Kerry, Richardson.
If he did endorse, who?
Posted by matthewcc | January 9, 2008 10:09 PM