Friday Open Thread [4.17.15]

2016 is going to be a good year for taking back the Senate. Indeed, at this moment, I foresee a 10 seat pickup for the Dems.

WISCONSIN–SENATOR–Marquette University Law School: Fmr. Sen. Russ Feingold (D) 54, Sen. Ron Johnson (R) 38.

NEW HAMPSHIRE–SENATOR–PPP: Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) 46, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) 45

Democrats need 5 seats to win back the majority (4 if we have a President Hillary D.R. Clinton (D) and a Vice President Julian Castro (D)). We are going to win Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana, and Missouri while keeping Colorado and Nevada.

INDIANA–GOVERNOR–APPROVAL RATINGS–Howey Politics Indiana: Gov. Mike Pence’s approval rating has fallen to 45% — down from 62% in February. Such a shame.

FLORIDA–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY–Mason-Dixon: Rubio 31, Bush 30, Cruz 8, Paul 7, Walker 2

Jon Stewart made a pretty compelling case that it is Dick Cheney, not President Obama, who actually strengthened Iran and gave it time to build up a nuclear program. No shit.

The National Journal has learned that “[a] secretive group that serves as the umbrella operation for leaders and activists within the conservative movement will host two meetings in the coming months, the first to vet Republican presidential candidates and the second to discuss coalescing behind one of them.”

“The Council for National Policy, a shadowy organization of several hundred dues-paying members, typically meets three times a year in various locations around the country. But with the 2016 cycle accelerating, and many conservative leaders intent on rallying behind a single candidate, CNP’s leadership is taking extraordinary measures — scheduling two top-priority meetings outside of Washington — and inviting a large number of nonmembers to both.”

Damon Linker writes about how presidential races are “the ultimate battlefield” in the culture war:

More than ever, presidential politics is about something other than politics. It’s about culture, identity, signaling, and symbolism. In a country of 318 million people, in which there is no shared religious conviction, no shared ethnicity, and increasingly no common culture or moral consensus about marriage and sex, and in which the burden of what is typically a nation’s greatest act of collective endeavor and sacrifice (war) has been offloaded to a tiny segment of the population that voluntarily bears the burden largely out of public sight and mind — in such a centerless country, with a media culture that fixates on image, style, and symbolism, a single nationwide quadrennial election in which every adult citizen can participate has taken on existential overtones.
More than affirming his or her ideology or policy proposals, we want to be able to look at a presidential candidate and say: “That’s me. That’s who I am. That’s how I see America.”

Democrats are used to making this kind of point about Republicans. With their swaggering gait, ostentatious denials of evolution and climate change, and gratuitous references to God, guns, grits, and gravy, GOP presidential candidates do nothing to conceal their cultural signaling. Unless it involves race. In that case, Democrats point out, Republicans will speak in subtly camouflaged terms about wanting to “take our country back” from the likes of “Barack Hussein Obama.” What Republicans mean when they talk this way is that they want a president who looks like them, which means white. (Many Democrats assume that this unedifying display of prejudice will be repeated in gendered terms should Hillary Clinton become the first female president in 2016.)

Nancy LeTourneau on the dynamics between Hillary and Obama as we come up to 2016, because, if you haven’t already noticed, Obama is no lame duck and he will not leave the stage until his time is up, and Hillary is not running from him, she is running towards him.

The modern-day precedent has typically been set by presidents who found themselves embroiled in scandals during their second term – which contributed to their lame-duckness (Reagan with Iran/Contra, Clinton with impeachment and Bush with Iraq/financial crisis). The dynamics will be very different this time around.

And so it should come as no surprise that – as Chozick, Haberman and Martin point out – Hillary Clinton has decided to run on President Obama’s record rather than triangulate between he and Republicans.

Rather than run from Mr. Obama, she intends to turn to him as one of her campaign’s most important allies and advocates — second only, perhaps, to her husband, the other president whose record will hover over her bid…

Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said that she “is proud of what was accomplished, both as President Obama’s partner on critical issues of national security, and on the progress made on the domestic front” and that “a campaign would be about laying out her own vision for tackling our toughest challenges.”

Given the current political dynamics, that is a very good move.