Monday Open Thread [8.24.15]

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY–Reuters/Ipsos: Trump 32, Bush 16, Carson 8, Huckabee 7, Walker 5, Rubio 4, Cruz 4.

WISCONSIN–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY—Marquette: Walker 25, Carson 13, Trump 9, Cruz 8, Rubio 7, Fiorina 7, Bush 6, Huckabee 4, Paul 2, Christie 2, Jindal 2, Kasich 1, Perry 1, Santorum 1

WISCONSIN–PRESIDENT–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY—Marquette: Clinton 44, Sanders 32, Biden 12, O’Malley 1, Webb 1, Chafee 1

WISCONSIN–PRESIDENT–Marquette:

Clinton 51, Trump 35
Clinton 52, Walker 42
Clinton 47, Bush 42
Clinton 50, Cruz 38

“Republicans may control both the House and Senate, but any hope of enacting spending bills laden with conservative priorities — like defunding Planned Parenthood and Obamacare — will almost certainly die when budget negotiations begin in earnest later this year,” the Washington Post reports.

“That’s because the hardening reality on Capitol Hill is that for GOP leaders to avoid government shutdowns or debt defaults they need to rely on Democratic votes in both chambers. And the minority party isn’t about to lend its support to bills containing policies it strongly opposes. “

“If Trump is nominated, then everything we think we know about presidential nominations is wrong.” — Larry Sabato, quoted by The Guardian.

Yesterday I posted David Atkin’s thoughts about Joe Biden not having anything to lose in running for the Presidency a third time, no matter what happens. Booman responded to that article, and he captures my thoughts on the subject rather well:

[A]ll things being equal, running for president and losing turns you into a sad character. You can easily become somewhat ridiculous and worthy of pity, and this can became your enduring legacy which wipes out all your previous accomplishments and successes. What do people think about when they discuss George McGovern or Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis or Mitt Romney? Did their presidential bids do anything positive for Fred Thompson or Rudy Giuliani or Phil Gramm? Whether you win the nomination like Al Gore or lose it like Bill Bradley, what people remember is that you didn’t become the president.

Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey could be remembered as legendary senators and sitting vice-presidents, but they are instead remembered as complete, devastating failures for the left. […]

So, I don’t think we can say that Joe Biden has nothing to lose by making a run for the presidency. If he slips into retirement, he’ll be remembered with near-universal fondness. While he did suffer two humiliating defeats when he ran for president, that was largely erased when he was elected as vice-president. His Senate career was hugely successful and his popularity in his home state never waned.

If he makes a third run at the presidency and doesn’t win, that will muck up a posterity that’s looking pretty golden right now. It will also, to some degree, amount to a rejection of a third term for Obama, which will tarnish his legacy ever so slightly.

With President Carter being diagnosed last week with a metastatic cancer that has spread to his liver and brain, there were some retrospectives on his life and Presidency. Jonathan Allen at Vox writes that President Carter accomplished more during his Presidency than he is given credit for:

Richard Moe, who was chief of staff to Vice President Walter Mondale, said Carter pursued an ambitious domestic and foreign policy agenda that he thought was right for the country and accomplished much of it through the combination of the power of the office and his sheer will.

“The country was facing a lot of really hard choices at that point in the ‘70s in the economy and energy and foreign policy,” Moe said in an interview. “He didn’t hesitate to make those hard choices, and he did so at great political cost to himself in many cases.”

For example, Carter began the move toward more sustainable energy by deregulating natural gas and creating an Energy Department, opened up Latin America to the US by giving control of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians, established formal diplomatic relations with China, and struck a peace accord between Egypt and Israel that remains intact to this day. His efforts to open up the marketplace to competition were felt in the deregulation of not only energy but the ground and air transportation industries, as well as banking and insurance. […]

For the most part, though, Carter’s presidency was defined by restoring integrity to the Oval Office. Mondale once described the administration’s accomplishments this way: “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, we kept the peace.” To that, Carter wrote, it should be added that “we championed human rights.”

Walter Rodgers from the Christian Science Monitor raised a similar point in “Stop Picking on Jimmy Carter” back in 2009:

Carter wasn’t just a “good man who got in over his head,” as critics say. He was in fact quite a good president.

He kept us out of endless wars. He protected the Alaskan wilderness (Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D) of Wisconsin once told me that “Carter was the greatest environmental president the country ever had.”) He promoted a visionary energy policy. He countered the Soviet military threat. And since he left office, he has persistently promoted the cause of peace around the world. The landmark Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty he fashioned remains in force today. […]

Carter was truly the prophet without honor in his own land on energy policy. Thirty years ago, he preached conservation and alternative energy. A profligate nation – not to mention Congress and the vested interests – ridiculed him. Today, his ideas are mainstream. […]

Reagan Republicans disingenuously claimed credit for much of America’s long-range military buildup that helped win the cold war. But it was Carter who proposed deployment of 200 MIRVed MX missiles in hardened silos to counter an unbridled Soviet buildup. (Under Reagan, only 50 were actually deployed.) Cruise missiles and the B-2 Stealth bomber technology were also born under Carter.

To the Russians, the most terrifying weapon the Americans ever deployed was the intermediate-range Pershing missile, which had a flight time of 10 minutes to Moscow from NATO bases in Germany. Carter agreed to deploy that weapons system. […]

Carter was one of the most brilliant presidents we’ve ever had. Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill wrote that Jimmy Carter was the “smartest public official” he’d ever known. […]

Oh yeah, and that infamous “malaise” speech? He never actually used the word. And his text remains prophetic:

“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption…. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning….

Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources – America’s people, America’s values, and America’s confidence.”

And he was right. He maligned for that speech BECAUSE he told the truth.

Erik Loomis on the fans of Bernie Sanders:

It continues to be striking to me how much liberals want to believe in That One Candidate Who Will Change Everything. Like Obama in 2008 (who admittedly stoked these fires for himself), many liberals are turning to the next Great Man to solve our problems. They would have preferred the first Great Woman, i.e., Elizabeth Warren to do this for them, but with her refusing to run, Bernie is good enough. The problems here are manifold, but far more so if Bernie was actually elected. Were that to happen, he’d face the exact same structural problems Obama does with Congress and the courts, the same corporate lobbying system, and the same inability to change the system on his own. It’s true that he would not have some of Obama’s weaknesses, like the belief in bipartisanship and the terrible education and trade policies. But then again, Bernie’s gun and Israel policies are bad. So progressives would quickly see their hero thrown against the rocks of the system and make some mistakes of his own. They’d call him a sellout and look for the next Great Man to solve all their problems.

The inability of so many liberals to think structurally is really exasperating.

Exactly. I admit it, I fell into that trap (believing in That One Candidate Who Will Change Everything) in 2008. Some liberals/progressives who fell into that trap with me wildly disdain President Obama for his many perceived failings (witness a certain little comment thread from the last time I dared discuss Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton). If Sanders somehow wins the nomination and then wins the Presidency, President Bernard Sanders himself will, two to three years from now, disappoint because he did not solve everything at once.