Friday Open Thread [6.12.15]

Charlie Cook at The National Journal:

Bush could still be the Republican nominee, but I would put his chances no higher than 25 percent—about the same as two other relatively establishment candidates (though many would quibble with that characterization), Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. We’ll have to wait and see whether another quasi-establishment candidate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, can break through the morass of other candidates into contention as well; the former House Budget Committee chair has arguably the strongest credentials of any contender in either party, though his campaign is off to a relatively late start. But when you add it all up, there’s a pretty decent chance—no less than 25 percent, I’d say—that Republicans will opt this time for a strongly anti-establishment candidate, whether it is in the person of Sens. Ted Cruz or Rand Paul or (possibly but less likely) former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. That means the odds of Republicans doing something outside the box in 2016 are extraordinarily high.

2016 Ideology Spectrum | InsideGov

Booman on why there are so many GOP presidential candidates:

The most obvious is that the Bush/Cheney years were such an unmitigated fiasco that they left a black hole in their wake from which no leadership could emerge. Anyone with any experience was discredited. The more of an expert you wanted to be on the economy or foreign policy, the more of a dunce you looked like to all sentient human beings.

In any case, there was no heir apparent and McCain and Romney fell flat on their faces. What we got instead of leadership was a collective primal cry of pain and blame shifting that manifested itself in the modern Know-Nothing Tea Party Movement and Mitch McConnell’s strategy of maximal nihilistic opposition.

But this only explains the reason that no one could emerge with any credibility. That the Republican Establishment is back with another Bush tells you just how empty the legitimate well of talent had become.

Rick Klein: “Hillary Clinton’s decision to not engage – and not even take a firm position – is itself a policy stance that has frustrated liberals along the way. But they don’t seem to have penetrated the debate in a way that’s made the Clinton campaign reconsider. The fact that a debate that’s torn Democrats apart to the point that they’re threatening to let each other “rot” has played out without the participation of the overwhelming frontrunner for president is nothing short of remarkable.”

Uber is now official in Delaware.

Politico: “Clinton is no Teddy Kennedy, who suffered the most infamous case of lockjaw in political history when asked why he wanted to be president during the 1980 campaign; Her problem is that she’s far more interested in the how than the why of the presidency, and views her greatest assets as a willingness to engage all participants in a debate and a workmanlike capacity to hammer out policy solutions.”

“Clinton’s big speech will be a rare opportunity to change that narrative. It will be held at New York’s Roosevelt Island—a none-to-subtle signal that she’s aligning herself with FDR, the boldest of Democratic presidents and the one who established the deepest personal connection with voters—something Clinton has struggled to do throughout her three-decade career. And she’ll do so with a broad progressive agenda, her advisers told me, studded with policy proposals to be unveiled in greater depth in a series of speeches this summer, starting with an ambitious plan to cut student debt and lower tuition and a program to coax corporations into paying their workers more. Clinton’s staff believes this is where the campaign will be won or lost—it will signal to voters, and to ideologically driven Obama donors, that she’s every bit as committed to their cause as Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders—or the Hillary Clinton of 1993 for that matter.”