Saturday Open Thread [11.7.2015]

Damn. That is a brutal ad that has laid ruin to David Vitter. And it is all 100% truthful and accurate.

Louisiana appears to be on its way to electing a Democrat. How did that happen? Robert Mann:

The Jindal-GOP brand is toxic. Vitter and Gov. Bobby Jindal are mortal enemies, but most people know little about their mutual disdain. Jindal’s profound unpopularity – he’s even less admired in Louisiana than President Barack Obama – is an onerous burden for Vitter to lug into the runoff. It’s hurting him among voters hesitant to award the job to someone whose policy positions are almost identical to Jindal’s.

Voters are disgusted with Washington insiders. Perhaps just as damaging to Vitter as lingering questions about his 2007 prostitution scandal is his long affiliation with Washington/congressional dysfunction. Conservative voters hate D.C. insiders with a red-hot fury, which is one reason Ben Carson and Donald Trump are the GOP presidential frontrunners.

Attacks on Edwards as an Obama clone aren’t sticking. Vitter has always made elections about someone or something else. As he did in 2010, Vitter wants this race to be a choice between him and Obama. So far, trying to link Edwards to Obama isn’t working – and his racially charged attacks may only energize the black vote for Edwards.

Philip Bump on Ben Carson’s rough 72 hours.

[The] scrutiny phase is in full swing. There was the pyramids thing and questions about his allegedly violent youth. But on Friday morning, a big one from Politico: Carson admits he made up a part of his biography about having been selected to attend West Point — something Carson defended as recently as August.
So of course, the mind of the pundit (such as it is) moves one step further down the line. If Carson’s poll numbers enter the “decline” phase, where does that support go?

We actually have data to answer that question from this week. Fox News, in its most recent national poll, asked Republican voters about their first and second choices to win the nomination. For Carson voters, most of their support moved to Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

Meanwhile… “The U.S. intelligence community has retreated from claims that two emails in Hillary Clinton’s private account contained top secret information,” Politico reports.

“The determination came from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office and concluded that the two emails did not include highly classified intelligence secrets. Concerns about the emails’ classification helped trigger an on-going FBI inquiry into Clinton’s private email set-up.”