IOWA–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY—PPP: Trump 19, Carson 12, Walker 12, Bush 11, Fiorina 10, Cruz 9, Huckabee 6, Rubio 6, Kasich 3, Paul 3, Jindal, 2, Perry 2, Santorum 2, Christie 1, Gilmore 0, Graham 0, Pataki 0
IOWA–PRESIDENT–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY—PPP: Clinton 52, Sanders 25, O’Malley 7, Webb 3, Chafee 1
It’s not that Democrats are souring on Clinton- her 75/15 favorability rating now is pretty similar to its 78/16 standing in April. But Sanders is definitely catching fire as voters become more familiar with him- his favorability is 61/14, up from 40/16 on the previous poll. As Democrats get to know him they’re pretty much completely deciding that they like him.
Clinton continues to be pretty dominant with ‘somewhat liberal’ voters (57/22), moderates (54/18), women (56/21), and seniors (58/19). The group where it’s closer are ‘very liberal’ voters (49/39), men (47/30), and younger voters (46/31).
NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY—Reuters: Trump 24, Bush 12. No other candidate tops 8 percent, though I don’t have the internals to tell you specifically.
NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY—Morning Consult: Trump 32, Bush 11, Carson 9, Walker 6, Rubio 6, Paul 5, Cruz 4, Christie 4, Fiorina 3, Kasich 3, Perry 1
Little House on the Praire’s Laura Ingalls is running for Congress. Yes, as a Democrat.
Joan Walsh on the innate sexism of conservatives.
So many in the media are shocked at the rise of Trump and the piggishness he represents. I can’t understand why. From the dawn of the Obama administration some of us have experienced the surge of racism and misogyny personally.
Within days of Obama’s inauguration, I had former House Majority Leader Dick Armey tell me on “Hardball,” after I’d criticized Rush Limbaugh, “I’m so damn glad you can never be my wife, because I surely wouldn’t have to listen to that prattle from you every day.” A lot of folks on the left were outraged; on the right, they laughed and cheered Armey.
One of those who laughed was Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, a debate moderator along with Kelly Thursday night. On conservative Mike Gallagher’s radio show, Wallace said he found feminist anger over Armey’s insult “pretty funny.”
Walsh cites other examples, such as personally being the recipient of misogynistic swipes from GOP and conservative stalwarts such as Gordon Liddy and John Kasich. My mother was a diehard Hillary supporter in 2008, while I was a diehard Obama supporter, and she said to me that Hillary’s loss proved that sexism was more prevalent than racism in our society. I disagreed with him, at least to the point that it explained while more liberal Democratic voters chose Obama over Clinton. But we can now see that those who are racist against blacks, bigoted against gays, are also sexist against women. And most of those voters make up the GOP base.
This reality has always been true, but the media refuse to acknowledge. And now they are being forced to by Donald Trump’s unexplained resilience in the polls after his racism and sexism was exposed. Jeb Bush says that Donald Trump is a threat to the GOP Brand. That is not true. Exposing the truth about the GOP voter is a threat to the GOP Brand.
Rick Klein: “Donald Trump may fade – or crest at least – and summer will give way to new storylines of fall. But he’s already invented a new and remarkable campaign style that breaks molds and has uncanny ways of breaking through.”
“Start with the public events, the circus-like gatherings where Trump Force One touches down and the Donald unleashes himself on a crowd, tipping the room toward him. Then add the continuous stream of telephone interviews, where Trump’s voice lashes out in new and unpredictable ways, delivering on expectations almost without fail, and picking new fights from time to time. And then there’s Twitter, which Trump uses as a nuclear campaign button whenever, it seems, a thought or insult occurs to him.”
“For Republicans, and the broader political class, this represents the new normal. Nobody campaigns like Donald Trump. But there’s no campaigning anymore that doesn’t take into account that Donald Trump is in this campaign.”
It is to those Trump backers that we offer this friendly advice: Get serious. If you’re still onboard after what you’ve seen the last few days, you’re either only pretending to be a Republican or you’re happy to skip down the Whig Trail to nowhere.
One debate in (with fallout), and this phenomenon, for lack of a better term, has ceased to be about Donald Trump. As in years past, it’s now more about the people who say they support him, hell (quite possibly) or high water (undoubtedly). […]
Look, we understand his mile-wide, inch-deep surface appeal. He insists he’s the one anti-political-correctness candidate. “He tells it like it is,” instead of offering stereotypically squishy, over-focus-grouped talking points. He sounds so fearless because he’ll say anything to anybody.
Except he’s not. He whines and complains when a debate moderator asks him pointed and perfectly within-bounds questions about things he has done or said. When that questioner is a woman, he steps down from the gutter — or wherever — and tries to bully her into silence, then denies what the world understood him to say.
In the past, most Republicans have fudged this issue. The more honest among them admit that it’s mostly for political reasons: in their hearts they don’t support any exceptions to an abortion ban, but they realize the broader public does. So the lesser evil is to do what’s necessary to move public opinion, which is the only way to eventually get to a full-blown ban on abortion.
But that fudging is apparently getting less tenable these days, and it’s forcing Republican candidates to take public positions that they know are very unpopular. If this starts to spread, it could be bad news for the incrementalists, who correctly believe that such an extreme position is likely to lose them a lot of support. I wonder what would happen in the next debate if one of the moderators asked one of those show-your-hands questions to the entire field about whether they support a rape or incest exception to an abortion ban? We know where Rubio and Walker are. But what about the rest of them?