Year: 2015

HILLARYMENTUM!!!! A new national CNN/ORC survey released today shows Hillary Clinton laying waste to the entire Republican field. This poll is significant because it is the first poll post the announcement by Clinton that she is running for President.

Clinton 55, Rubio 41 Clinton 56, Bush 39 Clinton 58, Christie 39 Clinton 58, Paul 39 Clinton 58, Huckabee 37 Clinton 59, Walker 37 Clinton 60, Carson 36 Clinton 60, Cruz 36

These numbers are apocalyptic for the Republicans, especially when you consider my view that the most likely nominee in such a crowded field will be Ted Cruz. Why do I believe that? First, because in such a crowded field, it will be easy for the the winner of the primary to be a person who only getws 15-20% of the total primary vote. The candidates that inspire a small but fanatical following, like Ben Carson or Ted Cruz or even Mike Huckabee, may win these crowded primaries. And if they do that, they get all of the delegates. There is no proportional split of the delegates in Republican primaries as there is in the Democratic primaries. That means the winners would walk away with the vast majority of the delegates, and then, thus, the nomination. Second, some of the more palpatable candidates to the general electorate (Bush, Rubio, Walker, Graham) will base their campaigns on their electability, about how they the best candidate to take on Hillary in a general election. If polls continue to show Hillary trouncing every possible candidate by similar margins, then the electability argument is shit and you might as well go with who you really love and then maybe, just maybe, you'll get lucky.

So this poll attracted three times the number of votes as the average our other polls received, with a large majority being for strongly approve. Pay attention Geezer, that is the definition of freeping a poll. Freeping is a slang term going back to the early days of political blogs and online polls. There was this conservative site called Free Republic, and their denizens would be instructed to go out and find online polls and vote massively for the conservative option. They would FReep the poll, with the FR standing for Free Republic. Now the term applies across the board, generally. Obviously the call went out on Friday to Gordon loyalists to vote in this poll. Or, New Castle County residents are so deliriously happy with County Executive Gordon that they go out of their way to find online polls to indicate their approval. So what do the results tell us: 67% approve of Gordon, 38% strongly. 29% disapprove, 22% strongly. So either you love Gordon, or you hate him.

UPDATE - OKAY... Tonight 7:00. On this thread. Two, 3 person divisions. Division 1 will be, ME, Pandora and AQC. Division 1A will be Del Dem, Steve Newton and Prop Joe. I'll deal cards to establish who has first pick in each division.

Dana Milbank:

Also of note is that the partisan polarization occurs even though Americans aren’t all that split on policies or ideology. Their partisanship is more tribal than anything — the result of an ill-informed electorate. “In order to have an understanding of the ideology of your party and the opposing party you have to have a lot of information,” and “that’s something that just doesn’t happen for the majority of the electorate,” said Westwood. “However, most people understand their side is good and the opposing side is bad, so it’s much easier for them to form these emotional opinions of political parties.” This leads to a grim conclusion: The problem with politics isn’t Washington but the electorate. Members of Congress, most of whom come from safely gerrymandered districts, are behaving in a perfectly rational way when they avoid cooperation with the other party and instead try to build support within their own tribe.

It's the Fox News problem. Back in the day, there was a balanced media that punished extremism. But for 20 years now, there has been one channel dedicated to ideological news. That has led to having half the electorate being ill informed and rejecting any compromise, because their news anchors rejected reality and any compromise by not punishing extremism. So now you have a political party that rejects reality and compromise and does not punish extremism. The electorate is part of it, but Milbank has to look at HOW the electorate got uninformed.

Nancy LeTourneau on the dynamics between Hillary and Obama as we come up to 2016, because, if you haven't already noticed, Obama is no lame duck and he will not leave the stage until his time is up, and Hillary is not running from him, she is running towards him.

The modern-day precedent has typically been set by presidents who found themselves embroiled in scandals during their second term - which contributed to their lame-duckness (Reagan with Iran/Contra, Clinton with impeachment and Bush with Iraq/financial crisis). The dynamics will be very different this time around. And so it should come as no surprise that - as Chozick, Haberman and Martin point out - Hillary Clinton has decided to run on President Obama’s record rather than triangulate between he and Republicans.

Rather than run from Mr. Obama, she intends to turn to him as one of her campaign’s most important allies and advocates — second only, perhaps, to her husband, the other president whose record will hover over her bid… Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said that she “is proud of what was accomplished, both as President Obama’s partner on critical issues of national security, and on the progress made on the domestic front” and that “a campaign would be about laying out her own vision for tackling our toughest challenges.”

Given the current political dynamics, that is a very good move.