Monday Open Thread [10.26.15]

IOWA—CBS/YouGov: Clinton 46, Sanders 43, O’Malley 3
NEW HAMPSHIRE—CBS/YouGov: Sanders 54, Clinton 39, O’Malley 3
SOUTH CAROLINA—CBS/YouGov: Clinton 68, Sanders 25, O’Malley 1

IOWA—CBS/YouGov: Carson 27, Trump 27, Cruz 12, Rubio 9, Bush 6, Paul 3, Fiorina 3, Huckabee 2, Jindal 2, Kasich 2, Santorum 2, Christie 1
NEW HAMPSHIRE—CBS/YouGov: Trump 38, Carson 12, Bush 8, Rubio 7, Fiorina 7, Kasich 5, Cruz 5, Paul 4, Christie 2, Santorum 1, Graham 1
SOUTH CAROLINA—CBS/YouGov: Trump 40, Carson 23, Cruz 8, Rubio 7, Bush 6, Fiorina 3, Graham 2, Huckabee 2, Kasich 2, Paul 1, Christie 1

A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that 70% of Republican voters view Donald Trump as their strongest general election candidate, highlighting “the sharp contrast between the party’s voters and its top professionals regarding the billionaire businessman’s ultimate political strength.”

Mark Halperin says Republicans are in denial about Hillary Clinton: “A virulent strain of Clinton Derangement Syndrome, which scientists and Republicans thought had been wiped out at the end of the last century, is now inflicting millions of conservative Americans. Some Republicans so detest Hillary Clinton they are badly underestimating how likely she is, at this point in the campaign, to be America’s 45th president.

“Their denial is just as strong now as it was a month ago, before Clinton began a run of political victories that have enhanced her prospects, all while the roller derby/demolition derby that is the Republican nomination contest has continued to harm the GOP’s chances of winning back the White House.”

The Jeb! Bush campaign is on life support, according to Politico: “This closed-door summit for Jeb Bush’s richest donors was meant to be a pep rally, a reunion for loyalists eager to celebrate the family legacy with two former presidents. But as George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush draw supporters together under gray skies and unrelenting rains, the gathering has become a rescue operation for a candidate who looks unable to meet the expectations of the family brand.”

“Indeed, the man who was expected to be leading the Republican field by a mile, who raised astounding sums in his first months as a candidate, is now on life support, according to people inside the two-day meeting. With the campaign gasping for air, slashing costs, and narrowing a national strategy to a New Hampshire approach, investor confidence is cracking.”

A new Docking Institute of Public Affairs poll in Kansas shows only 18% of Kansans are satisfied with Gov. Sam Brownback’s (R) performance in office, and 61% think his signature tax policies have either been a “failure” or a “tremendous failure.”

You know, Kansans, you knew he was failure prior to the last election, and you had a perfectly reasonable Kansan replacement lined up, and you reelected the failure. So you deserve what you get, and I hope it is immense suffering.

When Vice President Joe Biden was asked by 60 Minutes why he didn’t run for president, his answer was very simple. Said Biden: “Couldn’t win. I’ll be very blunt If I thought we could’ve put together the campaign that our supporters deserve and our contributors deserved I’ll– I would have gone ahead and done it.” He also said that he wouldn’t run for political office again.

So no Governor Biden. Alas….

Chris Cillizza: “For months, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign labored listlessly under a cloud of doubt after revelations that she had a private e-mail server during her time as secretary of state. Then Republicans, as they have so often do, overreached on their Clinton attacks and, in so doing, handed the Democratic front-runner a message and momentum that she had struggled mightily to build on her own.”

Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly commented on the scene at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner in Iowa on Saturday:

The one thing some pundits are talking about is that Bernie Sanders “attacked” Hillary Clinton. But when it comes to these kinds of things, too few people note the difference between going after someone’s record vs going after them personally. Last night Sanders did what any candidate in his position would do – highlighted the distinctions between himself and the front-runner. I don’t consider that “negative” campaigning. It’s exactly what Sanders needs to be doing right now. Otherwise, why be in the race at all. […]

Clinton gave a speech that anyone who has followed her campaign has mostly heard before. As the front-runner, she didn’t focus on her competitors. Instead, she’s paving the way for the general election by highlighting the difference between Democrats and Republicans. The one smart move Clinton made last night that neither of the other candidates bothered with was to give a shout-out to Vice President Joe Biden. Of course that was her way of inviting any of his supporters who had been holding out to caucus for her.

In some ways it was the crowd that actually made the biggest news last night. Clinton was the last to speak. And as she came to the stage, reporters who were in the arena noted that the Sanders section emptied out. That was not a good look for them at a Democratic Party event. I doubt very much that the Sanders campaign organized the walk-out. But this is exactly the kind of thing that gets him in trouble with the Democratic base he needs to appeal to in a state like Iowa.

I was following the scene on Twitter and the Hillary campaign definitely had the more organized and largest presence, which is a far cry from 2008, when there were empty seats in her section. In 2008, Barack Obama wowed all with his speech, and it changed minds and gave him the momentum to win in Iowa six weeks later. From all the reporting, that did not seem to happen this time around.

Chris Christie did the most Chris Christie thing ever: he got thrown off the Amtrak quiet car for screaming on his Phone. And Ben Carson has plenty of energy, Mr. Trump. He once tried to stab a guy.

Speaking of Ben Carson, he said over the weekend that he would “love” to see Roe vs. Wade overturned, making abortion illegal nationwide, with almost no exemptions, NBC News reports.

He also said that he would “replace more than just Obamacare with his plan for health savings accounts. He also wants his plan to replace all health insurance except for catastrophic coverage. He even wants it to replace Medicare—the extraordinarily popular health program for the elderly.”

I pray Carson wins the nomination. Because he is doomed in the general.

“Tony Blair has given a qualified apology for his role in the 2003 Iraq war, admitting he had not properly understood the chaos that would follow the removal of Saddam Hussein, its leader, conceding it had contributed to the rise of Islamist group ISIS,” the Financial Times reports. “The former Labour prime minister also conceded the war was based on faulty intelligence, in what was seen as his most comprehensive mea culpa since the conflict.”

Qualified bullshit. This apology is a lie in and of itself. The war was not based on “faulty” intelligence. It was based on no intelligence at all. The threat was made up. Look, Tony, you’re going to Hell. So what do you have to lose by being completely honest?

Matt Taibbi on how Trey Gowdy made Hillary Clinton look presidential: “These morons in Gowdy’s committee were so bent on proving that Hillary is an unfeeling, ambition-crazed schemer bent on riding gleefully to the White House on the corpses of Benghazi victims that they ended up making her look like the one thing she really isn’t, at least not very often: a regular person.”

“Most of us who watched the fiasco imagined what we would do in her position, facing that same ludicrous barrage of circular questions. Most normal people would have done all of the same things she did: sighing, choking back angry retorts, shaking a head in disbelief at times, even laughing at the absurdity of it all.”

“Actually many people would have lost it early on and grabbed Gowdy by his goofy silver fro-hawk somewhere in hour six or seven, a fact that made Hillary by contrast look patient and presidential, in ways her campaign had been unable to achieve all year.”

“Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So, without Tom a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.” — Mitt Romney, quoted by the Boston Globe, praising the late Staples founder Thomas Stemberg. So after campaigning against it in 2012, Romney now wants credit for Obamacare. He can go frack himself.