Friday Open Thread [10.23.15]

Former Rhode Island Governor and Senator Lincoln Chafee is dropping out of the race today, so he will no longer be included in our polling results. What a great week for Hillary, she lost three opponents (Webb, Chafee and Biden) and destroyed the Benghazi Republicans, all in a span of five days.

IOWA—Quinnipiac: Clinton 51, Sanders 40, O’Malley 4
WISCONSIN—WPR/St. Norbert: Clinton 47, Sanders 42, O’Malley 1

IOWA—DMR/Bloomberg: Carson 28, Trump 19, Cruz 10, Rubio 9, Bush 5, Paul 5, Fiorina 4, Huckabee 3, Jindal 2, Kasich 2, Santorum 2, Christie 1

Key findings: “Even Carson’s most controversial comments — about Muslims, Hitler and slavery — are attractive to likely Republican caucusgoers. The poll shows just two perceived weaknesses: his lack of foreign policy experience and his research using fetal tissue during his medical career.”

WISCONSIN—WPR/St. Norbert: Carson 20, Trump 18, Rubio 18, Cruz 10, Fiorina 8, Bush 3, Huckabee 3, Kasich 3, Paul 2, Santorum 2, Christie 1

Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen. Carson’s lead in Iowa is confirmed, as is his lead in non-Iowa states like Wisconsin. Ted Cruz is at 10% in both polls and in the top tier.

WISCONSIN—WPR/St. Norbert: Clinton 50, Trump 39 | Clinton 49, Bush 39 | Clinton 49, Carson 45 | Sanders 55, Trump 37 | Sanders 52, Bush 38 | Sanders 48, Carson 42

Amanda Marcotte is amazed that GOP Voters want Trump to be their nominee and that they think he would be their strongest candidate against Hillary Clinton.

Clearly, Republican voters are delusional. It’s hard to imagine any scenario where Trump doesn’t lose spectacularly against Clinton. Consider how much Romney’s chances were hurt by his indelicate “47 percent” comment. And that was mild compared toTrump’s relentless hateful bleating about Mexicans, his unsubtle racism regarding President Obama, and his ugly attitudes about women that will likely not be contained for the many months of running against a woman. Democrats win by getting out the vote, and almost nothing will encourage women and people of color to stampede to the polls more than pulling the lever against Donald Trump.

But clearly, Republican primary voters don’t see this. Which calls into question the hope that they will wake up and start supporting someone more electable before it’s too late for their party. […] It’s entirely possible that voters are still in the pissing-off-the-liberals phase and haven’t even started to consider boring issues like nominating someone who can run a credible general election campaign.

Holly Bailey on what Joe Biden does now:

“The vice president, who will turn 73 in November, is facing the potential twilight of the only career he has ever really known, one he has inhabited in a way few other politicians have. He was just 27 when he was first elected to political office — a seat on the New Castle County Council in Delaware. Three years later, he ran for U.S. Senate and won. Just 30 at the time, he was the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history. All told, he’s spent nearly 46 years in office — more than half of his life — and Biden seems to have enjoyed nearly every minute of it.”

“Perhaps no politician since Lyndon B. Johnson has thrived on and loved public office more than Biden. Like LBJ, a creature of the Senate who also ascended to the White House, Biden has delighted in the nitty-gritty details of lawmaking and the art of making a deal and forging compromise even among political enemies.”

Yeah, bullshit on the blaming the intern, Donald. What, you never take responsibility for anything? Well, actually, you don’t, give your two divorces and five bankruptcies. Plus, this tweet is you. It is exactly what you feel, think and say.

So Paul Ryan is allegedly your new Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He apparently secured the Freedom Caucus votes by pledging to adhere to the Hastert Rule, which holds that no bill will be heard and voted on on the floor of the House unless a majority of Republicans approve of it. So Eugene Robinson is correct, Paul Ryan is doomed:

Boehner had to break the Hastert rule whenever ultra-conservatives threatened to bring about disaster — a potentially catastrophic default because the debt limit needed to be raised, for example. In those instances, Boehner got the legislation passed with a cobbled-together majority comprising Democrats and moderate Republicans. To keep his job, Boehner generally kept to the Hastert rule on other, less critical legislation. This is what made the Congresses he led so spectacularly unproductive. […]

If Ryan does become speaker and respects the Hastert rule, he will end up in the same position as Boehner — held hostage by the Freedom Caucus. In his meeting with the group, moreover, he reportedly softened his demand to eliminate a House procedure in which any member can call for a vote to “vacate the chair,” or kick the speaker out of his job. And he also reportedly promised to devolve more power to the rank and file, which is precisely the opposite of what needs to happen.

If Ryan gets the job, he will likely enjoy a honeymoon period. But the fundamental problem — no functional GOP majority — will remain. Ryan believes government should be small. Much of his caucus believes it should be thwarted.

Sounds like doom to me.

The curious thing to me is the debt ceiling. We default in 10 days, on November 3. How do we raise the debt ceiling without breaking the Hastert Rule?

So yeah, like I said above, Hillary’s had a good week. A good two weeks, actually. When she is elected President, we will look back at this month as the turnaround as we look at the Obama speech at the JJ Dinner in Iowa as the moment when his campaign took off in 2007-8.

Politico: “The remarkable week puts Clinton in better standing than she was at this point eight years ago, when Barack Obama changed the course of the election with an electrifying speech at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. It was a pivotal moment that marked the beginning of the end of Clinton’s presidential hopes that cycle. Today, as she gears up for that same dinner this weekend, Clinton appears to be the one enjoying a pivotal, game-changing moment.”

Todd Purdum: “In fact, across the board in the past 10 days—and after months when every news cycle seemed to bring more bad news for her—Clinton has seen event after event break her way, starting with last week’s strong debate performance.”

The New York Times explained how yesterday’s Benghazi hearing only served to embarrass Republicans:

The pointless grilling of Mrs. Clinton, who fielded a barrage of questions that have long been answered and settled, served only to embarrass the Republican lawmakers who have spent millions of dollars on a political crusade. In recent days, some prominent Republicans have even admitted as much.

If there was any notion that the Select Committee on Benghazi might be on to something, it was quickly dispelled. In a flailing performance, the committee’s chairman, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, made it evident that he and his colleagues have squandered more than $4.6 million and countless hours poring over State Department records and Mrs. Clinton’s email. They produced no damning evidence, elicited no confessions and didn’t succeed in getting an angry reaction from Mrs. Clinton.

The Economist:

The ten-hour grilling Hillary Clinton was subjected to in Congress on October 22nd was, said her Republican interrogators, necessary to uncover the truth of how and why those four Americans died. But this was nonsense. The Benghazi select committee, launched by the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, has spent 17 months and, by a conservative reckoning, $4.5m shining little more light on those questions than seven previous enquiries. And indeed, the truth of the matter does not seem terribly elusive.

Anticipated by Washington insiders for weeks as a possible tank-trap for her presidential campaign, the interrogation gave Mrs Clinton’s enemies little encouragement and her supporters a good bit to cheer. Much of the questioning from the Republican committee members, which grew more vituperative as the hours ticked by, was ill-focused, irrelevant or asinine.

Jamelle Bouie at Slate:

You don’t have to like Clinton to see that this is a coup for her campaign. Not only has she bolstered her image as a smart, competent policymaker, but she’s even defused her email controversy—or come close to it—by talking about the issue in a calm, nonadversarial way. Meanwhile, by the fifth hour, committee members like Roskam were hitting Clinton for having a skilled press team.

When this began, conventional wisdom was that Hillary had to survive the scrutiny. That at best, this would be a wash. Toward the end, however, that wisdom changed. “Unless something happens,” wrote conservative columnist Matt Lewis on Twitter, “it’s starting to look like Hillary Clinton won’t merely survive this hearing—she will have come out on top.”

Jonathan Allen at Vox:

Republicans will kick themselves for dragging Hillary Clinton before the House Benghazi committee Thursday.

It was a defining moment for Clinton’s presidential aspirations. She handled the GOP’s questions with aplomb and without the patina of partisanship that has characterized the committee since its conception. That would have been bad enough for the Republicans’ hopes of seizing the White House in 2017. But she did much more than that. She answered questions that Republicans have been hanging out there in hopes of sowing doubts among voters.

I always knew conservatives looked upon the Empire and Darth Vader as the good guys in the Star Wars movies.