Friday Open Thread [8.14.15]

Rand Paul ruined this ad by throwing in Bill Clinton’s deposition testimony. He really does have a hangup over the whole Lewinsky thing, doesn’t he? It’s a shame that Rand Paul will be one of the first candidates to drop out, because seeing Hillary destroy him would be fun.

But Donald Trump’s quotes are going to kill him eventually.

“Donald Trump, the newly crowned frontrunner in the GOP presidential race in Iowa, will arrive by helicopter for his afternoon at the Iowa State Fairgrounds,” the Des Moines Register reports.

“The private chopper will land in a fenced field near the fairgrounds as reporters with television cameras watch. He’ll step up to the mass of microphones and open himself up to press questions. At 1 p.m. Mr. Trump will proceed into the fair for meet and greet. He will be seeing the butter cow.”

And the butter cow will be fabulous. It’s performance art.

The Washington Post thinks he is actually trying to win Iowa: “The groundwork laid by Trump’s sizable Iowa staff, with 10 paid operatives and growing, is the clearest sign yet that the unconventional candidate is looking beyond his summer media surge and attempting to win February’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.”

Jack Shafer: “In the August 6th Republican candidates debate, Trump answered the moderators’ questions with linguistic austerity. Run through the Flesch-Kincaid grade-level test, his text of responses score at the 4th-grade reading level. For Trump, that’s actually pretty advanced. All the other candidates rated higher, with Ted Cruz earning 9th-grade status. Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker scored at the 8th-grade level. John Kasich, the next-lowest after Trump, got a 5th-grade score.”

“Trump’s low grade at the debates wasn’t a fluke. His comments from an August 11 news conference in Michigan earned only a 3rd-grade score.”

At Politico, Sen. Claire McCaskill explains “How I Helped Todd Akin Win — So I Could Beat Him Later.” It is an enjoyable read, including the ancedote that she shotgunned a beer after Akin won the GOP primary. I wish there was video of that. However, I have to criticize her this morning because she has recently said that Bernie Sanders is the Democratic Trump. That is not even remotely true, on every possible level, and it is an insult to Bernie Sanders.

Zeke Miller on the meltdown of Rand Paul’s campaign:

After picking—and losing—three fights with his opponents on debate night, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is struggling to reverse the trajectory of campaign and hoping to pick a fight with Trump to do it. It’s not clear if that will be sufficient to right Paul’s lilting campaign, however. Internal disagreements are spilling into the public, fundraising has been slow (in part because the candidate hates to do it), supporters are fretting that Paul has squandered his moment and the Senator’s moods are even pricklier than normal. The mid-summer meltdown of Paul could be nothing more than a blip by the time Iowa’s caucuses arrive in February. But, for the moment, the post-debate angst seems to signal that Paul has much work to do to correct course before his political hopes sink in the mighty Mississippi, which gives Iowa its eastern borde

The National Journal has offered their top 12 Senate seats that could change parties in the 2016 election. The Democrats need only 4 seats for a majority, if they win the Presidency, 5 seats if they do not. Ten of the 12 are currently held by Republicans, so gaining the majority is definitely within reach. Their top 6:

1. Illinois (Sen. Mark Kirk (R) running for reelection)

Kirk needs to run close to a perfect race to win reelection in deep-blue Illinois. So far, he’s doing anything but. The first-term Republican has suffered a seemingly uninterrupted series of gaffes this year, causing even close allies to (temporarily) wonder if he should abandon his campaign. His likely opponent, Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, has her own issues to worry about, including a potentially damaging civil lawsuit and a primary opponent. But for now, she looks like a clear-cut general-election favorite.

2. Wisconsin (Sen. Ron Johnson (R) running for reelection)

Former Sen. Russ Feingold has shown a willingness to break away from his old self-imposed campaign-finance limitations, which has helped his bottom line but also given his opponents fuel to label him a hypocrite. Republicans have had some success doing just that, thanks also in part to reports that a PAC the liberal icon created gave almost none of the $7 million-plus it raised to progressive candidates. But Wisconsinites still harbor warm feelings for Feingold, and he is undoubtedly a favorite to retake his old seat. Though Republicans say Johnson’s performance as a senator has improved greatly in the last year, the mistakes of his early tenure could still haunt his campaign.

3. New Hampshire (Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) running for reelection)

For now, we (and many Democrats) are still penciling in Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan as the party’s nominee—even if it’s not a given. The governor set back her timeline for a decision when she vetoed a state budget earlier this summer, and GOP groups have used the subsequent stand-off between Hassan and Republican state legislative leaders to run millions of dollars worth of attack ads against her, hoping to damage Hassan and maybe even convince her not to run. The ads have taken their toll on her popularity, but, critically, Hassan’s approval as governor remains enviable. It’s important to note that although we consider New Hampshire the state third most likely to flip party control next year, the gap between it and Wisconsin is sizable; this race looks like a true toss-up. And if Hassan doesn’t run, New Hampshire will slip dramatically in these rankings.

4. Pennsylvania (Sen. Pat Toomey (R) running for reelection) (5)

In Katie McGinty, the Democratic establishment finally found a candidate it believes in. But can she defeat Joe Sestak in a primary? The 2010 Democratic nominee has successfully taken on his party’s bigwigs before, and even McGinty’s backers concede she is far from assured of making it to the general election. The upside for Democrats is that McGinty, who is trying to become the first female senator in Pennsylvania’s history, could make for a formidable foe to Toomey. In a state that leans left during presidential elections and a time when few senators outrun their presidential nominees by much, that should worry Republicans.

5. Nevada (Sen. Harry Reid (D) retiring) (6)

Rep. Joe Heck’s ability to court minority voters in his battleground House district gives the GOP hope that he can win over a Latino-heavy state. His track record, however, is about the only reason we rate this state as a prime pickup opportunity for the GOP. As we noted in Pennsylvania, Senate campaigns are increasingly just mirrors of the presidential race, and next year’s Democratic presidential nominee will be heavily favored to win a state President Obama carried by nearly seven percentage points in 2012. Heck might catch a break if the less tested Democratic candidate, Catherine Cortez Masto, stumbles. But he must also worry that the prospect of the nation’s first Latina senator excites Hispanic voters.

6. Ohio (Sen. Rob Portman (R) running for reelection) (7)

Despite Portman’s respected reputation in D.C., Republicans have started to worry that the first-term senator’s dedication to his National Republican Senatorial Committee duties last cycle cost him back home. Quinnipiac surveys have found him trailing former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, who remains well-known even as about a third of voters said they didn’t know enough about Portman to form opinions about him. But none of this is lost on Portman, who’s been hard at work stockpiling millions for reelection and investing early in a political infrastructure. Strickland, meanwhile, brought in a new finance director after underwhelming fundraising, and he still has a much-younger primary challenger nipping at his heels and generating some sympathy from local press and party veterans. Ohio’s just-right-of-center lean relative to the country could ultimately play an important role for Portman.

My opinion is that the Presidential race is going to matter greatly here. If the Democratic nominee wins Ohio and Nevada, then the Democratic candidates in the Senate races will also win. Out of these 6, I see the Democrats holding onto Nevada, winning Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin. New Hampshire and Pennsylvania will be tough, and will depend greatly on the campaigns the Democratic challengers run. Indeed, I think the Democratic candidates in Florida, Arizona and Missouri have more chances to win in their states than in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

Paul Waldman writes about the hypocrisy of Ben Carson:

In one of those fascinating moments that is only possible because of the internet, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson got caught in a controversy Thursday when a physician noted on her theretofore non-famous blog that Carson performed research on tissue from aborted fetuses in the 1990s. She even posted photos of the medical journal in which it was published. This is newsworthy because Carson, like all good Republicans, has expressed outrage at Planned Parenthood over videos taken by anti-abortion activists showing members of the organization discussing the transfer of just that kind of tissue. […] Republicans have always hated Planned Parenthood, not only because it provides abortions but because it’s a forthright advocate on behalf of women’s rights to control their own reproductive lives. This is an excuse to attack the organization, nothing more and nothing less.

It is too bad that Ben Carson is a retired surgeon. Because if he were still active, if the medical community has the same disciplinary governing body that lawyers do (and I think they do), then I would file a complaint to revoke his medical license for either demonstrating a complete lack of necessary knowledge relating to his field, or lying, or defaming the field, or all three.

Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Yes, there may be deep concern among some who fear that Clinton’s once unassailable position is eroding, but if so it is unfounded. Her institutional strengths and advantages are far too significant to be overcome by any Democrat now in the race or likely to join the race, and that includes Vice President Joe Biden. If that weren’t true, Biden would be in the race already. […] During the George W. Bush administration, some 88 senior officials in the Bush White House were discovered to have used non-governmental email accounts to conduct government business and evade transparency requirements; email from more than 50 of those officials — amounting to somewhere between 5 million and 20 million emails — somehow disappeared and most were never recovered. Nobody was prosecuted for it.

One more point: There’s no evidence that Clinton’s email system was ever compromised, and as we’ve seen from recent hacks, keeping her emails on a “protected” government server would not exactly have been a guarantee of secrecy from prying foreign eyes. That doesn’t excuse her decision, but it’s nonetheless true.