Monday Open Thread [4.20.15]

HILLARYMENTUM!!!! A new national CNN/ORC survey released today shows Hillary Clinton laying waste to the entire Republican field. This poll is significant because it is the first poll post the announcement by Clinton that she is running for President.

Clinton 55, Rubio 41
Clinton 56, Bush 39
Clinton 58, Christie 39
Clinton 58, Paul 39
Clinton 58, Huckabee 37
Clinton 59, Walker 37
Clinton 60, Carson 36
Clinton 60, Cruz 36

These numbers are apocalyptic for the Republicans, especially when you consider my view that the most likely nominee in such a crowded field will be Ted Cruz. Why do I believe that? First, because in such a crowded field, it will be easy for the the winner of the primary to be a person who only getws 15-20% of the total primary vote. The candidates that inspire a small but fanatical following, like Ben Carson or Ted Cruz or even Mike Huckabee, may win these crowded primaries. And if they do that, they get all of the delegates. There is no proportional split of the delegates in Republican primaries as there is in the Democratic primaries. That means the winners would walk away with the vast majority of the delegates, and then, thus, the nomination. Second, some of the more palpatable candidates to the general electorate (Bush, Rubio, Walker, Graham) will base their campaigns on their electability, about how they the best candidate to take on Hillary in a general election. If polls continue to show Hillary trouncing every possible candidate by similar margins, then the electability argument is shit and you might as well go with who you really love and then maybe, just maybe, you’ll get lucky.

Here are the poll’s numbers of the nationwide GOP and Democratic primaries themselves:

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY–CNN/ORC: Bush 17, Walker 12, Paul 11, Rubio 11, Huckabee 9, Cruz 7, Carson 4, Christie 4, Santorum 3, Perry 3, Jindal 2, Kasich 2, Fiorina 2, Graham 2, Pataki 0.

Seriously, they included former New York Governor George Pataki as an option, because, well, he is an announced candidate, and not a single person chose him.

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY–CNN/ORC: Clinton 69, Biden 11, Sanders 5, Webb 3, O’Malley 1, Chafee 1

“If Jeb Bush loses New Hampshire, they’ll get Mitt Romney back in the race.” — James Carville.

Funny, but that’s not going to happen. Mitt Romney is not going to sweep to victory across the Southern States. And yes, Jeb Bush has to win New Hampshire or he will have to drop out. He won’t win Iowa, and he won’t win South Carolina. So to make it to Super Tuesday, he has to win New Hampshire.

A new Quinnipiac poll in New Jersey finds voters are giving Gov. Chris Christie his lowest approval rating yet, 38% to 56%.

The Wall Street Journal on the divide among candidates for the GOP nomination that is beginning to take shape: “On one side are Jeb Bush and Sens. Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham, who emphasized that the party’s nominee needs to reach beyond the GOP’s base of mostly white and older conservative voters, given how the general electorate is growing increasingly diverse. On the other sits a handful of presidential contenders, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who say the party’s nominee needs to be a dedicated conservative who can mobilize the religious right to turn out in droves in 2016.”

The latter side will win.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) “continued to signal his increasing interest in running for president Sunday, saying he’s waiting for a signal from God before making the call,” Politico reports. Said Kasich: “My family is a consideration. Number two, the most important thing is, what does the Lord want me to do with my life?”

God is not the first consideration in his mind??? He’s doomed.

Gary Hart says the U.S. is becoming an obligarchy. Becoming?

“Our Founders created a republic and, being keen students of the history of republics beginning with Athens, they knew that placing special and narrow interests ahead of the common good and the commonwealth was the corruption that destroyed republics. They feared this kind of corruption as the greatest danger to America’s success and survival.”

“By this standard, today’s American Republic is massively corrupt. Every interest group in our nation has staff lobbyists and hires lobbying firms. Thousands of lobbying firms now penetrate the halls of Congress as well as all State capitols and city halls. Those same lobbying firms collect funds for election and re-election campaigns. In exchange, they have access to legislatures and administrations, those who write the laws and make the regulations.”

WISCONSIN–PRESIDENT–Marquette University School of Law: Clinton 52, Walker 40.

Dana Milbank looks at the greatest divide in America. It’s not race or even the gender gap.

Up until the mid-1980s, the typical American held the view that partisans on the other side operated with good intentions. But that has changed in dramatic fashion, as a study published last year by Stanford and Princeton researchers demonstrates.

It has long been agreed that race is the deepest divide in American society. But that is no longer true, say Shanto Iyengar and Sean Westwood, the academics who led the study. Using a variety of social science methods (for example, having study participants review résumés of people that make both their race and party affiliation clear), they document that “the level of partisan animus in the American public exceeds racial hostility.”

Americans now discriminate more on the basis of party than on race, gender or any of the other divides we typically think of — and that discrimination extends beyond politics into personal relationships and non-political behaviors. Americans increasingly live in neighborhoods with like-minded partisans, marry fellow partisans and disapprove of their children marrying mates from the other party, and they are more likely to choose partners based on partisanship than physical or personality attributes.