Tuesday Open Thread [6.17.14]

North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis laments that the “traditional” voting bloc of his home state and nation is “more or less stable,” while minority blocs have been growing. By “traditional,” of course, he means white. Indeed, Thom (and who spells Tom like that anyway?), which is why you Republicans are in grave danger demographically.

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Annenberg poll finds former President and future First Gentleman Bill Clinton “is by far the most admired president of the last quarter century[.]” Meanwhile, Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), a once and perhaps future Presidential candidate himself, says Hillary Clinton was a “[v]ery, very capable public servant, great secretary of State, first lady. Very capable.” And there goes his presidential hopes.

Philip Klein doubts the public will blame Obama for the collapse of Iraq, noting that “most people viewed the disintegration of Iraq as inevitable, and they didn’t want to pay the price in blood and treasure in perpetuity, waiting endlessly for the creation of an Iraqi government that could stand on its own”:

A CNN/ORC poll taken in December 2011, around the time of the U.S. withdrawal, found that Americans expected Iraq would get overrun by terrorists, but overwhelmingly supported withdrawal anyway.

Specifically, the pollsters offered a series of scenarios and asked if they were likely or unlikely to happen in the “the next few years.” The results: 54 percent said it was unlikely Iraq would “continue to have a democratic government that will not be overthrown by terrorists”; 60 percent said it was unlikely Iraqi security forces would “be able to ensure safety and security in Iraq without assistance from the United States” and 63 percent said it was unlikely Iraq would “be able to prevent terrorists from using the country as a base of operations for planning attacks against the United States.” Despite this pessimism, 78 percent of Americans in the same poll said they approved of the decision to withdraw. …

The only way this becomes a political problem for Obama is if he intervenes and things don’t improve or get dramatically worse. Which is likely another reason why he’s reluctant to get involved.

Iraq was ALWAYS going to collapse, because it was a made up country to begin with, with three major ethnic groups that hated each other. Vice President Joe Biden, it turns out, was the smartest and most prescient US elected official regarding Iraq, because he has for years lobbied for the breakup of Iraq into three different states. One of the main reasons those of us who opposed the war did so was because we knew this would happen and, short of, occupying Iraq forever and slaughtering its entire population, there was no way to stop it. But now the very same people who lied us into war criticize Obama for not going back in guns blazing. Matthew Yglesias:

The logic on display here shows the toxic self-justifying nature of American military adventures. If a war accomplishes its stated objectives, that goes to show that war is great. If a war fails to accomplish its stated objectives — as the Bush-era surge miserably failed to produce a durable political settlement in Iraq — then that simply proves that more war was called for.

But there is simply no reason to believe that the presence of American soldiers in Iraq makes a durable political settlement more likely, and there never has been. If eight years weren’t enough, why would one more — or two more or twenty more — be the key to success?

The truth is the opposite. The speed with which the apparent gains of the surge melted away in the face of Iraq’s entrenched domestic political problems underscores how futile the US-led campaign there was.

The US military is the finest military in the world, the sharp spear of the mightiest empire in human history. But the considerable virtues of America’s fighting forces do not give it any particular expertise in micro-managing Iraqi politics. And the fundamentals in Iraq have simply never been very good for a peaceful and democratic settlement. The country is not only divided between sectarian groups, but sandwiched between two rival regional powers, with Iran tending to favor Shiite interests, Saudi Arabia tending to favor Sunni ones, and neither power having any particular interest in democracy and pluralism. Throw in the well-known phenomenon of the oil curse and the country’s lack of stable institutions, and you’ve got a recipe for problems, problems that a bunch of heavily armed young people — no matter how well-intentioned or well-led — are not capable of solving.

We were right to leave. We are right to stay out. They were wrong to go in. And we should not listen to their advice again.

NATIONAL–OBAMACARE–Bloomberg National Poll 56% favor keeping the law with perhaps “small modifications,” while 10% would leave it as is. That’s the highest level of acceptance yet.

MISSISSIPPI–SENATE–REPUBLICAN RUNOFF–Polling Company (R): Chris McDaniel (R) 52, Sen. Thad Cochran (R) 40.

MISSISSIPPI–SENATE–REPUBLICAN RUNOFF–Chism Strategies: Sen. Thad Cochran (R) 48, Chris McDaniel (R) 47.

KENTUCKY–SENATE–Magellan Strategies (R): Allison Lundergran Grimes (D) 49, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) 46.

MICHIGAN–SENATE–Mitchell Research: Gary Peters (D) 45, Terri Lynn Land (R) 42.

MICHIGAN–GOVERNOR–Mitchell Research: Gov. Rick Snyder (R) 46, Mark Schauer (D) 41.

OREGON–SENATE–SurveyUSA: Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) 50, Monica Wehby (R) 32.

TEXAS–GOVERNOR–Texas Tribune/University of Texas: Greg Abbott (R) 44, Wendy Davis (D) 32.

HAWAII–GOVERNOR–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARYA new Honolulu Civil Beat: David Ige (D) 48, Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) 37.

MASSACHUSETTS–GOVERNOR–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY–Boston Globe/SocialSphere: Martha Coakley (D) 49, Steve Grossman (D) 14. Grossman just got the party endorsement at the convention this past weekend.

MASSACHUSETTS–GOVERNOR–Boston Globe/SocialSphere: Coakley (D) 42, Charlie Baker (R) 31.

VIRGINIA–SENATE–Rasmussen: Sen. Mark Warner (D) 53, Ed Gillespie (R) 36.

NEW YORK–GOVERNOR–Siena: Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) 57, Rob Astorino (R) 21.