Wednesday Open Thread [12.2.15]

NATIONAL—Quinnipiac : Clinton 60, Sanders 30, O’Malley 2

NATIONAL—Quinnipiac : Trump 27, Rubio 17, Cruz 16, Carson 16, Bush 5, Fiorina 3, Christie 2, Kasich 2, Paul 2, Huckabee 1

NATIONAL—Quinnipiac : Clinton 47, Trump 41 | Clinton 47, Cruz 42 | Clinton 45, Rubio 44 | Clinton 46, Carson 43 | Sanders 49, Trump 41 | Sanders 49, Cruz 39 | Sanders 44, Rubio 43 | Sanders 47, Carson 41

The New York Times says Republicans are paralyzed by Trump:

“Some of the highest-ranking Republicans in Congress and some of the party’s wealthiest and most generous donors have balked at trying to take down Mr. Trump because they fear a public feud with the insult-spewing media figure. Others warn that doing so might backfire at a time of soaring anger toward political insiders.”

“That has led to a standoff of sorts: Almost everyone in the party’s upper echelons agrees something must be done, and almost no one is willing to do it.”

Charlie Cook on the two views of the state of the Republican primary: “Think­ing about the 2016 Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial nom­in­a­tion has gen­er­ally boiled down to two com­pet­ing views. The first is that Trump and/or Car­son, the con­sum­mate polit­ic­al out­siders, will re­main at the top of the GOP field, with one or the oth­er end­ing up as the nom­in­ee; the pro­spect makes some Re­pub­lic­ans ec­stat­ic and drives oth­ers in­to a near-clin­ic­al de­pres­sion.”

“The second view: While we cer­tainly don’t know who the GOP nom­in­ee will be, we can feel reas­on­ably as­sured that it won’t be one of those two. Ad­her­ents of this view see today’s Re­pub­lic­an Party as be­hav­ing crazily but not ac­tu­ally in­sane.”

Dana Millbank: “Let’s not mince words: Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist. Some will think this an outrageous label to apply to the frontrunner for a major party’s presidential nomination. Ordinarily, I would agree that name-calling is part of what’s wrong with our politics.”

“But there is a greater imperative not to be silent in the face of demagoguery. Trump in this campaign has gone after African Americans, immigrants, Latinos, Asians, women, Muslims and now the disabled… It might be possible to explain away any one of Trump’s outrages as a mistake or a misunderstanding. But at some point you’re not merely saying things that could be construed as bigoted: You are a bigot.”

Gov. Chris Christie recently told the truth, that Donald Trump was wrong when he said that Muslims cheered in the streets of New Jersey after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“It didn’t happen and the fact is, people can say anything but the facts are the facts and that didn’t happen in New Jersey that day and hasn’t happened since,” Christie said Monday.

Trump’s reaction?

Trump: Well, you know he didn’t say that the other day, he was very weak the other day so the other day he said it like, “well, he doesn’t know,” and now I guess he feels a little bit emboldened. He must be careful on what he says.

So you oppose Trump, you are weak, and you better be careful what you say. Seriously, he is Adolf Hitler reborn. Or at least Benito Mussolini.

Donald Trump is now literally extorting a news network over his participation at the coming CNN Republican debate:

Said Trump: “How about I tell CNN, who doesn’t treat me properly … I’m not gonna do the next debate, okay? I won’t do the debate unless they pay me $5 million, all of which goes to Wounded Warriors or goes to vets.”

What’s next? Extorting towns millions for him to appear there? Will citizens be required to pay to see him? Will we have to pay to vote for him? Literally, not figuratively. And if we don’t, we are very weak losers.

First Read says there is no excitement for the GOP Establishment: “With two months to go until the Iowa caucuses, here’s another reality check on the state of the 2016 race: The Republican insurgents (Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz) are still beating the GOP establishment (Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie) — in the polls, in excitement, and in energy. Sure, two months is a long time in American politics (Newt Gingrich was leading Mitt Romney in the Dec. 2011 national NBC/WSJ poll by 17 points!!!). And, yes, what’s been a surprising and strange race will likely become even more surprising and stranger. But the only candidates who have truly surged so far in this GOP contest have been the insurgents.”

“So where is the excitement and energy on the establishment side? When will, say, Marco Rubio shoot up in an early-state poll the same way we saw, say, Ted Cruz in the most recent Quinnipiac poll of Iowa — despite Rubio’s recent endorsements and his impressive debate performances? It’s more than possible that Rubio (or Jeb) could win the GOP nomination without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire — something that’s never happened before in modern times on the Republican side. Such a scenario would prove the political scientists right that, ultimately, ‘the party decides.’ But until then, we’re still waiting for the establishment hype around Rubio among the insider crowd to translate into something tangible in the polls or on the ground. Then again, maybe simply being seen as even having a toe in the establishment is enough to chase away primary voters. Nothing can be assumed at this point.”

Nicco Mele says Donald Trump really wants to win: “One of the things I learned in political campaigns is that generally speaking the candidate who wants it most tends to win. You have to really want it. And lately I think Trump has decided he wants it. I’ve been on his email list since his announcement, and the frequency of the emails has increased from monthly to almost weekly, and the tone of the emails has shifted recently from ‘buy more hats’ to something that very nearly sounds presidential. I think something has changed and he’s decided he wants this, which is crucial.”

I have no doubt he does. This is the ultimate ego trip for a narcisstic egomaniac. I also believe he does not want to lose. So my theory is the first loss he receives, he will declare Americans to be losers and very weak for not voting for him and leave the race.

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) “strategy for avoiding a government shutdown is taking shape, with his leadership team seeking a clean break from the divisive intraparty warfare that plagued John Boehner’s (R-OH) tenure,” The Hill reports.

“GOP leaders on Monday predicted there would be no shutdown over Planned Parenthood funding and made clear that they expect an omnibus package to be approved with Democratic support before money runs out on Dec. 11.”

What about the Syrian refugees? Surely their will be riders on that. And that will be interesting, because for any spending bill to pass, you need Democratic votes because at least 50+ Republicans also vote no on any new spending at all (they believe the Federal Government should just close down forever). So that means there can be no ideological riders on the bill like the defunding of Planned Parenthood. But with the cowardly fear-mongering over the Syrian refugees, some “Democrats,” like our own John Coward Carney, support that.

Dave Roberts:

This is a model with which political analysts are extremely familiar. Many still think it fits, that Trump will flame out and the establishment will rally around an alternative.

Maybe so. But Trump’s dominance has gone on longer than anyone predicted, and it is making all kinds of people nervous, including the establishment media — the Sunday shows, horse race pundits, and Villagers who have become such an integral part of the Beltway political class.

Their trepidation has less to do with the fact of Trump lying than with the way he lies. They don’t mind being properly lied to; it’s all part of the game. What they cannot countenance is being rendered irrelevant. Trump is not kissing the ring. He barely bothers to spin the media. He does not need them, or give two shits what centrist pundits think. Their disapproval only strengthens him. Media gatekeepers are in danger of being exposed as impotent bystanders. …

The [GOP base] anger is understandable, even justifiable in many ways, but unfortunately it also involves believing lots of nonsense. And no amount of understanding and empathy can make Jade Helm anything but, factually speaking, nonsense.

Thus the dilemma. The old-guard political media has always seen itself as a disinterested referee. But what they confront now is aggressive, unapologetic nonsense, piped up from a nationalist, ethnocentric, revanchist conservative base through the mouth of one Donald J. Trump. He is forcing them to choose sides, to accept his bare assertions and make a mockery of their purported allegiance to accuracy … or to call him out and, in the eyes of his supporters, formally align against him.

The conceptual space for neutrality has all but disappeared. Media outlets are being forced to take sides, and facing the grim possibility that even if they do, they have no power to affect the outcome. Their twin idols — objectivity and influence — are being exposed as illusions. That’s what has them so anxious about Donald Trump.

Josh Marshall:

I don’t say this lightly or often. But this is one of the most important studies in years in terms of understanding the current state of American politics and society. The study is the work of two Princeton University scholars, Ann Case and Angus Deaton, who analyzed vast quantities of federal government data about mortality rates across age cohorts, racial and ethnic groups and genders. They made a startling discovery. As you would expect, every age and ethnic/racial grouping has continued to see a steady reduction of morbidity (disease) and increase in lifespans for decades. But there’s one major exception: middle aged (45-54) white people. Since roughly 1998, disease and death rates for middle aged white men and women has begun to rise. …

Let’s put this clearly: the stressor at work here is the perceived and real loss of the social and economic advantages of being white.

With this predicate in place, the role of education seems clear. As noted with ‘relative decline’, all things are indeed relative. We are also living in an era of stagnant or declining incomes for most Americans. That hits those with the lowest education levels the hardest. The declining importance of being white is simply not as big a thing if you’re a professional with an advanced and a solid income than if you’re someone with a high school education who was laid off from what you thought would be your career for life in your mid-forties.

This gets to why I think this study is such a critical contribution to our understanding of contemporary American politics. Several weeks ago I had lunch with a prominent US journalist who I’d been acquainted with for some time via email and social media but never met in person. In our conversation, this colleague spoke about the irreducible role of anger in the GOP presidential primaries and in the GOP Congress. As many have discussed, we’re now at the point where overthrowing leaders or shutting down the government isn’t simply a tool ready (perhaps too ready) at hand to achieve this or that policy goal. Rather it’s the desire to shut the government down and overthrow leaders that now appears to be the real goal and drive. Deciding whether it’s over the budget or Obamacare or Planned Parenthood or Syrian refugees is a secondary matter. Beneath the often febrile and sometimes race-tinged Republican talk about Obama “radically tranforming” America, or being a socialist whose erasing American ‘exceptionalism’ or various other regular themes on Fox News, one fairly straightforward, clear message is almost always discernible: The country people know, their country, is being taken away from them. We have grown accustomed to seeing a large segment of the body politic ready, indeed almost relishing the opportunity to break the state if it cannot control it.

So where does that anger, that combination of anger and loss come from? I’d say right here in the statistics we’re talking about.