Thursday Open Thread [11.12.2015]

You all remember the maps I made for our Daily Polling Report back in the 2012 campaign. Well, here is our map will look like in 2016. A little teaser for the coming campaign.

NATIONAL—CBS News/NYT: Clinton 52, Sanders 33, O’Malley 5

A new Economist Group/YouGov Poll finds that 49% of Republicans and independents who lean to the GOP say Donald Trump is the presidential candidate who can best handle immigration — well ahead of Marco Rubio with 10%, Ted Cruz with 7% and Jeb Bush at 5%.

George H.W. Bush is settling scores with Jon Meacham’s new biography of his Presidency. USA Today:

“Alone among modern ex-presidents, Bush ruled out producing an account of his White House tenure that would defend his decisions and settle some scores.”

“Now, however, George and Barbara Bush have provided extraordinary cooperation, including access to their diaries, for an account of his life and presidency that has depth and value. And there is plenty of dish: Bush’s distaste for 1988 Republican rival Bob Dole (‘a no good son of a bitch’), Nancy Reagan’s dislike of Barbara Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle’s machinations to stay on the ticket in 1992.”

I just ordered it.

Washington Post: “This has been a confusing race almost from the beginning, and it seems only to grow more muddled. That became apparent again on Tuesday night in the fourth round of debate among the candidates. No one was treated as though he or she was the person to beat. The night belonged to many and therefore to no one in particular.”

“Republicans have celebrated the breadth and depth of their field of candidates. At some point, they will have to pick the person to lead them. For now, the choices remain numerous, although hardly similar in what the candidates offer. The campaign has moved beyond the period of introduction. The next phase will bring more heated engagement and with it, perhaps, greater clarity. To date, the campaign has produced anything but.”

Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood decided to act like an unmitigated bastard and criticize his former boss for his own party’s admitted, obvious and treasonous obstruction. The New York Times:

“When President Obama first won the White House, he recruited Ray LaHood, a Republican congressman, to join his Cabinet. The appointment, Obama declared, ‘reflects that bipartisan spirit’ that would distinguish his presidency.”

“Despite the glowing words, Obama abandoned his promise to govern across the aisle, LaHood said in an interview. The only elected Republican in Obama’s original Cabinet, LaHood said that the president never made a sustained effort to reach out and gave up too easily. As a result, he became isolated and reliant on a narrow group of like-minded advisers.”

Mr. LaHood seems to give a pass to those responsible for the President’s giving up on bipartisanship, his own party. The President tried for two years, to his administration’s and this country’s detriment, to entice Republicans to participate in governing this country, to no avail. That is why, forever more, no President, and no candidate will ever again appeal to bipartisanship as a goal in an of itself.

The University of Delaware is going to select their new President next week, which I suppose means that the next President of the University will not be Vice President Joe Biden.

See more insane charts at Slate.

Dan Balz:

More than 10 months of campaign activity have left the Republican Party in a quandary. The contest for the GOP’s presidential nomination has no obvious front-runner.

This has been a confusing race almost from the beginning and it seems only to grow more muddled. That became apparent again on Tuesday night in the fourth round of debate among the candidates. No one was treated as though he or she was the person to beat. The night belonged to many and therefore to no one in particular.

The polls show a somewhat stratified field. Businessman Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson still stand above the others. Each, however, has limitations and questions that must be dealt with. Behind them are Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.). Both continue to impress with their debate performances, but neither has been through the fires that are surely to come.

After that, it’s anybody’s guess which of the other candidates is truly viable, but some could be. Even after months on the campaign trail, the winnowing has been minimal. More rather than fewer candidates still harbor dreams of accepting the nomination next summer in Cleveland. That means the incentives argue in favor of staying in to see how things shake out, rather than quitting in the face of tepid poll numbers or weak fundraising.

Rick Klein: “So he’s not Bob Dole’s favorite guy, just like he isn’t George W. Bush’s man, or John McCain’s. (Can you be disliked by three more effective boldfaced names, in the modern iteration of the Republican Party?) Ted Cruz isn’t playing their game because he’s playing a different one entirely, in casting himself as the right blend for a frustrated GOP that’s sick of losing and sicker still of the party establishment. Cruz is quickly developing into the man to watch, for his understanding of the primary electorate and the deft ways he uses that knowledge.”

“As Jeff Greenfield notes in a Politico piece, Cruz may be the most effective debater in the Republican field because he’s playing chess while his opponents play checkers. He’s executing a game plan that’s hard to read from the sidelines; somehow, he pseudo-attacked Marco Rubio on a high-profile issue (immigration) and a low-profile one (sugar subsidies) without having to utter Rubio’s name. Cruz’s camp sees itself as the potential heir to Ben Carson’s horde of voters. He’s looking like the next man to watch in the still-fluid race — and with Cruz, it’s never dull.”

Jonathan Chait says the Republican candidates are going to have a difficult time making the case for change in the general election:

All the candidates prefer to live in a world in which big government is crushing the American dream, and all of them lack even moderately credible specifics with which to flesh out this harrowing portrait. The most successful efforts were made by the candidates who did not even try and, in their different ways, used personal symbolism in place of policy detail. The two candidates who do this the best are Rubio and Donald Trump. Rubio answers the question about changing America by framing the problem in generational terms. What’s wrong with America, he explains every single time he is asked, is that it is old, and what’s needed is something new, i.e., him. Trump has the exact same approach, only in his telling, every problem is a matter of losing, and the solution is to bring in a president who wins, i.e., him. Both the Rubio and the Trump themes can be adapted to any subject, and can be stretched to cover up for a lack of policy substance or even ideological coherence. The lack of socialist horrors to have materialized under Obama is not a problem when your promise is to be new or to win.

The candidates who found themselves trapped were those who attempted to connect Republican dogma to concrete economic conditions. Fiorina wound up her concluding remarks by stating ominously, “Imagine a Clinton presidency,” before unspooling a litany of horrors. But of course we don’t have to imagine. We had a Clinton presidency. And, as Baker pointed out to Fiorina at the outset of the debate, the economy thrived.

In a debate where chastened moderators avoided interruptions or follow-ups, the candidates were free to inhabit any alternate reality of their choosing, unperturbed by inconvenient facts. Presumably, the general election will intrude, and the nominee will be forced to make a stronger case against what looks, at the moment, like peace and prosperity.