Saturday Open Thread [12.19.2015]
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Postwar history suggests that when a president has weak approval, his party pays a price in the next election… There’s one other factor to consider, though. It’s possible that in a partisan age, job approval doesn’t mean what it once did.”
“Just think back to the 2014 midterm. Then-Gov. Pat Quinn (D-IL) was at about 30% approval, but he only lost by four percentage points. Gov. Sam Brownback (R) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R) of Kansas had approval ratings in the mid-30s, but both won reelection. Granted, both of those states have strong partisan tilts (Illinois is Democratic, Kansas is Republican), and these were state-level races in a midterm year, but it’s possible that low approvals aren’t as much of a drag as they might once have been. Perhaps Obama’s approval will drop below the mid-40s, but Clinton could win if the Republicans produce a poor nominee.”
“The other thing is that, with the history of presidential approval ratings cited above, we do not have a huge sample size. There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule here, but there is a reason that Clinton, so far, is generally staying close to the president. Presenting a united Democratic front, and seeing Obama have a successful final year in office, can only be good for her chances. Plus, if Obama tanks, so probably do Clinton’s chances.”
A new report by demographics expert Ruy Teixeira finds significant demographic advantages for Democrats heading into the 2016 presidential election, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Based on demographic shifts alone, the report finds that if the 2016 Democratic nominee performs as well as Mr. Obama did in 2012 with various voter groups, she (or he) would win by six percentage points—up from Mr. Obama’s four-point win last time.”
Charlie Pierce on the Republican candidates:
First of all, none of these people will be my commander in chief. None of these people will have the job of keeping me “safe.” The first priority of a president is not keeping the country safe. The first priority of a president—indeed, the only priority of a president—is to preserve, protect and defend not me, but the Constitution of the United States. So sitting there, listening to a bunch of people who never served a day in combat talk about how they’re going to turn the Middle East into obsidian glass and how they will keep me safe, it was hard not to fall off my chair. Frankly, I wouldn’t hire any of these people to watch my car in a valet parking lot, let alone lead the country into what they never miss a chance to call, “the Third World War.” Chris Christie? Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio?
Texas Tribune: “Democrats are actively making plans around a would-be Cruz or Trump nomination as they enter the final stretch of 2016 candidate recruitment. Several House Democratic sources said the party pitch to recruits shifted this fall: If there is any time to run for Congress, it’s the year when Republicans are postured to run a controversial nominee.”
A new Democracy Corps survey finds 72% of Americans support a new law that would provide qualified candidate with limited public matching funds for small contributions they raise from constituents. Nearly four in ten (39%) strongly support this proposal.
Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post on the “great fracturing of the Republican Party”:
It is no longer possible to think of “the Republican Party” as a coherent political force. It is nothing of the sort — and the Donald Trump insurgency should be seen as a symptom, not the cause, of the party’s disintegration.
It is no longer possible to think of “the Republican Party” as a coherent political force. It is nothing of the sort — and the Donald Trump insurgency should be seen as a symptom, not the cause, of the party’s disintegration.
It makes no sense anymore to speak of “the GOP” without specifying which one. The party that celebrates immigration as central to the American experiment or the one that wants to round up 11 million people living here without papers and kick them out? The party that believes in U.S. military intervention and seeding the world with democratic values or the one that believes strife-torn nations should have to depose their own dictators and resolve their own civil wars? The party that represents the economic interests of business owners or the one that voices the anxieties of workers?
Damon Linker at The Week analyzes Ted Cruz’s candidacy:
Cruz may not be proposing to round up and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. He may not have floated the idea of a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the United States. And his campaign events may not resemble a fascist rally crossed with outtakes from The Jerry Springer Show. But in just about every other respect, Cruz should be considered an unacceptably radical option for a major-party presidential nomination. The fact that normally sensible commentators have begun to write neutral analysis articles about the possibility of Cruz serving as the Republican standard-bearer is just the latest alarming sign of how Trump’s presence in the race has managed to define political decency down. […]
The list of government offices that a Cruz administration would eliminate is long. The Internal Revenue Service would be shuttered, as would the cabinet-level Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development. President Cruz would also do away with 25 additional agencies, bureaus, commissions, and programs, including climate research funding for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program; the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Humanities; all federal regulation of CO2 emissions from power plants and other sources; the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles; and all federal mandates covering renewable fuel standards.
