Saturday Open Thread [10.17.15]

NEW HAMPSHIRE—Boston Globe/Suffolk: Clinton 37, Sanders 35, Clinton 37, Biden 11, Webb 3, O’Malley 1, Chafee 1

So Hillary got a debate bump.

NATIONAL—NBC News/Survey Monkey: Trump 28, Carson 23, Rubio 9, Fiorina 6, Cruz 6, Bush 5, Huckabee 3, Kasich 3, Christie 2, Paul 2, Jindal 1, Santorum 0, Gilmore 0, Pataki 0, Graham 0

Key findings: “Helping to shore up Carson’s level of support are white evangelical Republican voters (including independents who lean Republican). Carson, a Seventh-Day Adventist, is now supported by 33% of white evangelicals, up from 20% in September, and outpacing Trump among evangelicals by 10 points. This is an essential voting bloc in the early caucus state of Iowa, where white evangelicals made up 56% of Republican caucus voters in 2012.”

I knew religion had to be the basis of Carson’s support, because it makes no sense otherwise. Carson has no personality and no policies.

“The Democratic presidential contenders dramatically outpaced their Republican counterparts in the race for campaign cash last quarter, spotlighting how the parties are taking divergent paths in their pursuit of 2016 funding,” the Washington Post reports.

“The emphasis by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on raising money directly for their campaigns has helped them amass large donor pools critical to generating the estimated $1 billion each party’s candidate will need to raise by Election Day. While GOP candidates put an intense focus early in the year on raising huge sums for independent groups, many have had less success in attracting smaller donations that are the lifeblood of campaign operations.”

First Read on why Bush v. Rubio will get nasty: “They’re both competing for the same donors, and both are feeling pressure to show progress. And frankly, they’re both stuck in the second tier right now. Bush is trying to jump-start a surge with a massive TV buy, hoping that by November, polls will consistently show Bush at the top instead of treading water. For their part, Rubio’s camp has been trying to will momentum into appearing, but the facts haven’t yet matched his perceived potential. He too needs to show progress soon if he wants donors to start viewing him as the best establishment investment.”

First Read also notes that Sen. Ted Cruz is well positioned to make a long push and take advantage of the “inevitable” Trump collapse (if it ever comes). He had a very good campaign finance report this week: “His fundraising number was high, his burn rate was low and he’s got a nice chunk of change in the bank. Nobody else on the Republican side really checked all of those boxes.”

Gabriel Sherman at the Daily Intelligencer says we are already months into the Biden campaign:

Joe Biden is running for president — a fact that has been obvious, and true, for weeks. He spent the week continuing to phone key Democrats in early voting states and huddle with his kitchen cabinet, which includes his chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti; message man Mike Donilon; longtime adviser Ted Kaufman; and sister Valerie Biden Owens. He spoke with Harold Schaitberger, the general president of the powerful firefighters union, and won his endorsement, should he declare. According to a source, he told Schaitberger that “all the political pieces are in place.”

In effect, Biden has been running since Maureen Dowd published a Times column reporting how Biden’s 46-year-old son Beau implored his father to challenge Clinton for the nomination shortly before Beau died of brain cancer. The campaign picked up steam the following day when Alcorn, who had been a top strategist for Beau’s gubernatorial run in Delaware, joined the super-PAC. His arrival transformed what had been the fledgling brainchild of a 27-year-old former Obama volunteer into a serious campaign-in-waiting. Alcorn says they are “well on their way” to raising $3 million and have grown to 20 paid staffers that include veteran field operatives in Iowa, South Carolina, and Florida and a digital-data team. In September, it hired Mark Putnam, a veteran of Obama’s 2012 media team, to produce television ads.

Of course, what the Draft Biden PAC hasn’t had is Biden himself, and many Democrats believe that the vice-president has missed his window — that the debate went so well for Clinton she has effectively boxed him out. But this analysis assumes that Biden has been deciding whether he should enter. In reality, Biden is choosing what kind of campaign to run: an active one, in which he positions himself as a Clinton alternative, or a passive one that presents him as an alternative to Bernie Sanders or any of the other three non-­candidates who were onstage in Las Vegas.

Yes, the debate was comfortable to Democrats concerned about their front-runner, but it should also have been worrisome to Democrats concerned about their bench. “The fact she did well should surprise no one,” a Biden activist told me. “If she didn’t do well against those guys, then God help our party.” If something serious were to happen to Clinton — self-inflicted or not — the party would be entering a presidential race on favorable terrain but with a substantial talent problem.

Be a Plan B, Joe. If Hillary dies or otherwise is not able to make the campaign, then we turn our lonely eyes to you.

Throughout his early career, Donald Trump “routinely gave large campaign contributions to politicians who held sway over his projects and he worked with mob-controlled companies and unions to build them,” the Washington Post reports.

“Trump gave so generously to political campaigns that he sometimes lost track of the amounts, documents show. In 1985 alone, he contributed about $150,000 to local candidates, the equivalent of $330,000 today… As he fed the political machine, he also had to work with unions and companies known to be controlled by New York’s ruling mafia families, which had infiltrated the construction industry, according to court records, federal task force reports and newspaper accounts. No serious presidential candidate has ever had his depth of business relationships with the mob-controlled entities.”

Blog for Our Future’s Terrence Heath makes an excellent point in his post, “Democratic Debate Proves Movements Matter.” To all of those progressive activists laboring in social change movements, your efforts to make a significant difference, and they are well-reflected in the first Democratic presidential debate.