Tuesday Open Thread [12.15.2015]
NATIONAL—NBC/WSJ: Clinton 56, Sanders 37, O’Malley 4
IOWA—DMR/Bloomberg: Clinton 48, Sanders 39, O’Malley 4
NATIONAL—ABC News/Wash Post: Trump 38, Cruz 15, Rubio 12, Carson 12, Bush 5, Christie 4, Kasich 2, Paul 2, Fiorina 1, Huckabee 1, Graham
NATIONAL—Monmouth: Trump 41, Cruz 14, Rubio 10, Carson 9, Bush 3, Kasich 3, Christie 2, Fiorina 2, Paul 2, Huckabee 2, Graham 1, Pataki 1
IOWA—Quinnipiac: Trump 28, Cruz 27, Rubio 14, Carson 10, Bush 5, Paul 4, Fiorina 3, Christie 3, Huckabee 1, Kasich 1
NATIONAL—ABC News/Wash Post: Clinton 50, Trump 44
NATIONAL—NBC/WSJ: Clinton 50, Trump 40 | Clinton 48, Cruz 45 | Rubio 48, Clinton 45 | Carson 47, Clinton 46
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post says that while Trump’s polling lead matters, it should be put into some context:
So, yes, Trump’s lead matters. But it also matters that Republican primary voters constituted only 38 percent of those interviewed by the Times/CBS pollsters. If you take 35 percent of 38 percent, you are talking about 13 percent of Americans. This is almost exactly the same percentage that George Wallace, who ran a racist-populist third-party presidential campaign, won in 1968 against Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey.
Was the Wallace campaign important? Yes. Did Wallace speak for anywhere close to a majority of Americans? No. The same is true of Trump.
Nate Cohn says “it’s still too soon to say Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the nomination. He has a high floor but a low ceiling, and although he has weathered many controversies, the toughest days are yet to come.”
“The polls already show initial signs of those challenges, like Ted Cruz’s lead in Iowa; the number of Republicans who say they would not support him; his weakness in polls of verified voters; and his smaller or nonexistent leads in one-on-one matchups against likely rivals.”
“His chances of winning — which are real, even if not good — depend much more on the weaknesses of his opponents than his own strengths. The good news for Mr. Trump is that the opposition is flawed enough to entertain such an outcome.”
The New York Times says Ted Cruz will be a target at tonight’s debate: “Mr. Cruz, who is showing signs of consolidating support among hard-line conservatives, is likely to come under sharp attack. Issues like national security and immigration will take on greater urgency. And candidates who are struggling to leapfrog into contention are sure to try to seize on one of the last ripe opportunities to do so before voters in the early nominating states begin making up their minds.”
“But while much has changed, one figure remains the same: Mr. Trump, the leader in national polls and the field’s chief provocateur and pacesetter, whose sometimes outrageous and demagogic comments have not only roiled the race but also amplified divisions between party leaders and the conservative grass roots.”
Marco Rubio is going to need to world’s biggest Etch-A-Sketch to erase the digital record of him saying that he’ll appoint Supreme Court justices who will promise to overturn marriage equality.
The Economist on the rise of Right Wing Populism: “Populists differ, but the bedrock for them all is economic and cultural insecurity. Unemployment in Europe and stagnant wages in America hurt a cohort of older working-class white men, whose jobs are threatened by globalization and technology. Beneath them, they complain, are immigrants and scroungers who grab benefits, commit crimes and flout local customs. Above them, overseeing the financial crisis and Europe’s stagnation, are the impotent self-serving elites in Washington and Brussels who never seem to pay for their mistakes.”
“Jihadist terrorism pours petrol on this resentment—and may even extend populism’s appeal. Whenever IS inspires or organizes murderous attacks, the fear of immigrants and foreigners grows. When the terrorists get through, as they sometimes inevitably will, it highlights the ruling elite’s inadequacy.”
Bloomberg on the math of a contested GOP convention: “If three or more Republican candidates are still competitive in the presidential race beyond March 15, as seems increasingly possible, it will be difficult to avoid a situation in which no candidate accumulates over 50 percent of delegates, so multiple ballots could be needed to select the Republican nominee in Cleveland next summer. The working assumption is that one of those candidates will be Donald Trump—which has brought considerable focus to the establishment mind.”
Ted Cruz is a fan of the movie Princess Bride, so much so that he quotes many lines from the film in his stump speech, especially the lines of the character Inigo Montoya, who was portrayed by Mandy Patinkin, who now plays the character of Saul on the Showtime series Homeland. You know the famous line: “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Well, Mandy Patinkin, as expected, is not a fan of Senator Cruz.
“I would like to be with Senator Cruz for a moment and I would like to respectfully ask him, since he quotes all the lines from ‘The Princess Bride’ and certainly all of my character, Inigo Montoya’s, lines, I would like to know why he doesn’t quote my favorite line?” That line, Mr. Patinkin said, was among the last his character utters in a movie that essentially taught that love conquers all. […]
“After the princess flies out the window and falls into Andre the Giant’s arms,” Mr. Patinkin said, “Inigo says to the Man in Black, ‘I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.’”
Mr. Cruz, in Mr. Patinkin’s heavily left-leaning worldview, is trafficking in the revenge business, appealing to anxious voters by saying of the Islamic State, “We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion,” and by exploiting fears about immigrants and Muslims.
“Senator Cruz, if you’re going to say those lines, you’ve got to say the other line, too,” Mr. Patinkin said.
Sounding increasingly vexed, he added: “This man is not putting forth ideas that are at the heart of what that movie is all about. I would love for Senator Cruz, and everyone creating fear mongering and hatred, to consider creating hope, optimism and love. Open your arms to these people, these refugees trying to get into our country, and open your hearts.”
First Read on the nightmare that is the 2016 primary for the GOP Establishment: “After a slew of new polls over the past 48 hours, including from our latest NBC/WSJ poll, here is the unmistakable conclusion with seven weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses: Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are your co-frontrunners in the Republican race. And that is a potential nightmare scenario for the GOP establishment — because it might be able to sink one of these candidates but probably not both.”
“In a world without Donald Trump, there would be a Stop Cruz movement. But now the GOP establishment has to pick its poison. One other thing: Trump has now moved the window where Cruz looks moderate by comparison.”
Waleed Shahid, political director of Pennsylvania Working Families Party, has written a perceptive post titled “Donald Trump and the Disaffected, White, Working Class Voter,” and he observes, “Today the political poles are again moving farther and farther apart. An angry base of White, working and middle class voters emboldened by the Tea Party movement, Fox News and Trump are pulling Republicans in the direction of xenophobia and racism which Millennial movements for racial and economic justice and immigrant and LGBTQ rights are pushing Democrats toward a more inclusive society. Just like before the Civil War, these differences concern central, competing ideas about the heart of the United States. They explain why common sense reforms on gun violence, immigration, welfare, policing and finance have virtually no chance in passing in our broken system.”
The issue of Obama’s legacy will come into sharper focus in the months and years to come, but The Atlantic’s James Fallows noted over the weekend “three big things that have happened during his presidency that in all probability would not have happened without him”:
* The climate deal itself, as explained in a NYT piece just now, and in unbelievable contrast to the utter collapse of the Copenhagen negotiations early in Obama’s term;
* The rapprochement with Cuba, marking the beginning of the end of the single stupidest (but hardest to change) aberration in modern U.S. foreign policy; and
* The international agreement with Iran, which in the short term offers (as I have argued at length) the best prospects for keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and in the long run has the potential of beginning to end Iran’s destructive estrangement from the international order.
Best President of my lifetime.
I am not sure Trump’s supporters are going to like this comment, given their unvarnished racism:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said in an interview aired Sunday that he didn’t like what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said in a hearing on affirmative action. Scalia had said that affirmative action sent minority students to schools that were too academically challenging. […] “I thought it was very tough to the African-American community, actually,” Trump said. “I don’t like what he said. No, I don’t like what he said.”
